FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Rebecca Sizelove
(401) 474-2532
RSizelove@HopeHealthCo.org
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — HopeHealth announced this week that it will require its 610 employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 20, 2021. The mandate will apply to all employees, students, volunteers, and contractors. Close to 80% of all HopeHealth employees are currently vaccinated, with that number increasing every week. “For over eighteen months we have seen the devastation that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused in our communities. The evidence is now significant that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective in reducing hospitalizations and death from the virus,” said Edward Martin, MD, MPH, FAAHPM, HopeHealth’s Chief Medical Officer.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, HopeHealth has cared for over 1,200 COVID-19 positive patients. “We want to provide our patients and their families with the peace of mind that their HopeHealth care team is vaccinated regardless of where they are receiving care – in their home, a nursing home, a hospital or at the Hulitar Hospice Center,” said HopeHealth President & CEO Diana Franchitto. “Recent increases in transmission rates driven by the highly contagious Delta variant are concerning. The COVID-19 vaccine is our best defense in protecting our community.”
HopeHealth joins many other leading health care organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and American Nurses Association (ANA) and several health systems across the nation and locally in supporting the requirement of COVID-19 vaccination for healthcare workers.
About HopeHealth
For more than a century, HopeHealth has provided high quality, compassionate care to people in various stages of illness in communities in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Its roots began in home care in 1908 and then in hospice in 1976, coming together as HopeHealth in 2011 providing home care, palliative care, and hospice care. As the second oldest hospice in the country and one of the largest nonprofit providers of palliative and hospice care in New England, HopeHealth has set the gold standard in serious illness and end-of-life care. HopeHealth is the major teaching affiliate for hospice and palliative care of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.