Houston Methodist Hospital’s 26,000 employees can expect some extra cash in March – as long as they receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
The hospital’s president and CEO, Dr. Marc Bloom, told employees in an email sent last week that they can expect a $ 500 bonus as a “thank you for your perseverance during a difficult 2020.” Eligibility criteria for receiving the award include the vaccination COVID-19, “fulfilling our obligation as health professionals to lead the community,” he said.
The hospital also gave employees $ 500 bonuses about six weeks ago for their work during the pandemic, which killed some 353,000 Americans. Houston was hit particularly hard, with almost 2,700 deaths and more than 247,000 confirmed cases in Harris County.
Employers, including health care providers, face a balancing act to vaccinate their workforces. For now, vaccination is not necessary for Houston Methodist employees, but “will eventually be” for most employees, Bloom wrote. Although many companies are stopping before making shots mandatory, they have the right to require immunization for most workers according to the recently approved federal employment guidelines.
“I think people are wanting more than they are not,” said a Houston Methodist spokesman, who received his second dose of the vaccine on Monday.
There is at least anecdotal evidence of reluctance among some healthcare professionals to get vaccines, with Dr. Joseph Varon, chief of intensive care at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, recently reporting concerns among nurses in his unit to NPR.
Concerns about COVID-19 vaccines are greatest among African Americans, according to the Pew Research Center, which recently found that less than half of black adults planning to get vaccinated, versus 60% of Americans in general who plan to get vaccines .
African Americans have less confidence in the medical system than white patients, and often receive worse care, studies have found. In part, this reflects the history of medical maltreatment of black Americans, including experimental operations on black women enslaved between 1845 and 1849 by Alabama surgeon J. Marion Sims, as well as the infamous Tuskegee Institute experiments in the 1930s that examined the progression of syphilis in black men.
Fear that political considerations could negate security concerns, especially when it comes to African Americans, has led the country’s oldest group of black doctors to form a task force to track the data as pharmacists developed vaccines. The group expressed its support last month for the two vaccines being distributed.
Some experts supported the idea of offering employees a financial incentive to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
“The ‘adult’ version of the doctor handing out candies to children, luckily, points to a solution: pay the people who receive the injections (or injections, since more than one may be necessary)”, Robert Litan, an elderly non-resident Fellow from the Brookings Institution, said in an August opinion piece for the Washington think tank. “How much? I don’t know of any science that can answer that question, but my strong guess is that no less than $ 1,000 per person won’t solve the problem.”
But other economists say these payments could backfire, citing studies that suggest offering money in exchange for vaccination may lead them to conclude that vaccines are risky.