96% of Monroe Community Hospital staff are vaccinated, it accepts new rehab patients again

Rochester, New York – After Monroe Community Hospital had put a pause on new admissions back in September, it will begin admitting short-term patients to the 28 rehabilitation unit again.

Over 90% of long-term facilities across New York, including Monroe Community Hospital stopped accepting new patients over the uncertainty of how many workers would quit their jobs rather than comply with a state vaccine mandate for health care workers.

“In order to make sure our residents received that standard of care, we just couldn’t continue to add more residents until things stabilized,” said Monroe County Executive Adam Bello Wednesday.

According to the hospital’s website, from 700 employees at Monroe Community Hospital, 40 decided not to get the shot.

Monroe Community Hospital director Alyssa Tallo says they’re in a position to help alleviate that problem, because, across the area, patients needing long-term care are stuck at hospitals, waiting for a nursing home bed to open.

“Given the fact that we were so successful during that mandate, we are going to slowly introduce and accepting new admissions primarily in our rehab unit so that the census at Monroe County Hospital doesn’t grow to a point that we can’t control.”

According to Tallo, 96% of staff are vaccinated and the hospital has onboarded 22 new staff members.

“Even on the day the vaccine mandate took effect, we had a new employee orientation that same morning. There are still people coming into the health care system,” said Bello.