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When nurse Julia Buffo was told by her Montana hospital that she had to be vaccinated against COVID-19, she responded by filling out paperwork declaring that the shots run afoul of her religious beliefs. She cited various Old and New Testament verses including a passage from Revelation that vaccine opponents often quote to liken the shots to the “Mark of the Beast.” She told her managers that God is the “ultimate guardian of health” and that accepting the vaccine would make her “complicit with evil.” (Hollingsworth, 2/14)

Some of America's health care workers appear to be considering their job options outside the industry, according to a new Axios/Morning Consult survey. Health care workers aren't immune from the trends driving the Great Resignation across the U.S. workforce. Those caring for COVID-19 patients are more likely than other health care workers to report that they've been thinking about heading to another industry. (Reed, 2/15)

The professionals who provide care at community mental health clinics around the state are leaving their positions faster than they can be replaced, worsening access just as the stresses of the pandemic have intensified the need among their mainly lower-income patients, according to a survey released Tuesday. The survey, conducted by the Association for Behavioral Healthcare, found that for every 13 clinicians who leave these outpatient facilities, only 10 can be found to replace them. As a result fewer patients are getting care than before the pandemic, while many more are seeking it. The 37 clinics that responded to the survey had nearly 14,000 people on waiting lists. (Freyer, 2/15)

As the U.S. health system buckles under the weight of the Covid-19 pandemic, private equity firms are cashing in. Some of their investments center on nurse staffing agencies, a little-known cluster of companies that helps send free-floating nurses to help hospitals when they’re short-staffed or otherwise in need of extra help. Hospitals have relied on the agencies like never before during the pandemic, as wave after wave of hospitalizations strained nurses, who face a crushing burden of sick patients and the possibility that they will fall ill themselves. (Cohrs, 2/15)

The nurses and technical employees and the University of Vermont Medical Center have reached an agreement to increase wages, the hospital announced Monday. The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals voted to accept a wage proposal in advance of the nurses’ contract expiring this summer, the hospital said. (2/14)

Roughly two years of a pandemic have forced mental health needs front and center for many employers. Faced with new or different challenges, many employees are more aware of their own mental health needs, and as they spoke up, employers, too, have developed a stronger awareness of the importance of addressing those needs, said Patty Starr, president and CEO of Health Action Council (HAC), a nonprofit coalition representing midsize to large employers that aims to enhance human and economic health. (Coutré, 2/14)

The omicron wave of Covid-19 put less of a dent in U.S. employment growth than most forecasters expected, but it did keep a lot of workers home. The 2.3% of employed Americans not at work because they were ill for the entire mid-January jobs survey reference week was the highest such percentage since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track in 1976, and by far the highest in recent years. Still, it wasn’t that much higher than the 2% recorded in January 1978, during an outbreak of a highly contagious but not very dangerous influenza strain that came to be known as “Russian flu.” From the looks of the accompanying chart, missing work because of illness was probably even more common before the mid-1970s. (Fox, 2/14)