Vacancies Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

More Than Half Of DHHR’s Workforce Eligible For Retirement By 2029

A health committee Sunday heard reports from state officials that more than half of the Department of Health and Human Resources workforce will be eligible for retirement by 2029.

Dr. Sherri Young, interim secretary of Health and Human Resources, and incoming secretary of the Department of Health presented an update on the transition of the Department to the Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability.

She said while hiring initiatives have taken place and vacancies have been filled, more than 50 percent of the DHHR’s workforce will be eligible for retirement by 2029.

“Imagine five years from now 53 percent of those people retiring and going home,” Young told the committee. “You’re going to lose the institutional knowledge of the folks or nurses that have been there for 40 years. You’re going to lose that institutional knowledge of programs and how to make things work.”

She said it is important to build efficient systems during the restructuring of the department to avoid delays when that workforce retires.

“So we owe it to our citizens of West Virginia to make sure that we get the most efficient programs, but then we are backfilling and making sure that we are getting young folks and West Virginia folks in there to serve these programs now, because we have that additional vulnerability later on,” Young said.

Del. Bob Fehrenbacher, R-Wood, asked Young to survey the workforce to find out who will retire when they are eligible and who will stay on past retirement age.

“In my experience yes, there’s a day with experience and age that happened, but then workers may stay around longer,” Ferenbacher said. “And so to kind of understand when they’re eligible versus when they currently leave, I think would be interesting to kind of incorporate that into your you will attrition and planning and higher up in that regard.”

Young replied that while that survey could be useful, the retirement eligibility of the workforce is still a weakness in the system, one she hopes to remedy with planning.

“It’s not a bad question to go ahead and ask folks upon retirement eligibility, ‘Do you plan to stay?’ It’s our goal to make that a place where people want to stay,” Young said.

Hoyer Confirms Next Pfzier Vaccine Shipment Will Be Less Than Initially Expected

Officials leading West Virginia’s coronavirus vaccination rollout say the state will get fewer doses of Pfizer’s vaccine next week than was originally anticipated.

Maj. Gen. James Hoyer of the West Virginia National Guard says the state was notified Thursday night that next week’s shipment of the Pfizer vaccine will be less than what the state expected.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that some states were surprised to learn of the drop in shipped doses. The drug maker said they have millions of doses in a warehouse ready to be sent out but they had not been ordered through the federal government.

Hoyer says the cause for the reduced shipment remains unknown.

“There’s various things going on related to what the issue is behind that. We’ll find out I’m sure later related to that,” Hoyer said.

He said the state’s rollout has allowed for contingencies — including the vaccinations of critical healthcare workers and nursing home residents and staff to continue as planned.

Hoyer said changes to the rollout of Pfizer’s stock will affect later phases of the distribution plan.

West Virginia was slated to receive 60,000 initial doses of the Pfizer vaccine over the course of the first few weeks. Thereafter, the state has been capped at a weekly order just under 17,000 doses.

W.Va. Begins Drive To Vaccinate All Nursing Homes In Weeks

West Virginia is rapidly deploying doses of the coronavirus vaccine to residents and workers at long-term care centers, setting an ambitious target of vaccinating all facilities within three weeks.

The state with one of the oldest and most at-risk populations is prioritizing its care center residents alongside health workers. Officials are working with small and local pharmacies to reach long-term care communities across the rural state, leapfrogging most states that are relying on a partnership with CVS and Walgreens to kick in any day now.

“We’re making progress towards being the first in the nation to vaccinate all nursing homes and assisted livings in our state,” said Marty Wright, head of the West Virginia Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes and assisted living communities.

Wright said nearly 2,000 doses were administered to workers and residents across 18 care centers on Tuesday. He said pharmacies expect to reach 48 facilities and get 7,000 doses into arms by the end of the week. That would mean about a quarter of the state’s facilities would have received the first of two required doses.

The West Virginia National Guard said that people at Sundale Nursing Home in Morgantown, the first facility in the state to report a COVID-19 outbreak in March, received vaccinations on Tuesday.

Deaths at U.S. nursing homes have accounted for about 40% of all coronavirus deaths.

“The current objective, on long-term care facilities getting the first dose of the vaccine, would be no longer than 30 days,” Maj. Gen. James Hoyer, head of the National Guard, said this week. “But we believe we can accomplish it in potentially three weeks with perfect coordination with our long-term care facilities.”

The state surpassed 1,000 deaths linked to COVID-19 this week and reported 27 more on Wednesday. There are 21,260 active cases of the virus in the state and hospitalizations have recently reached record highs. The daily positivity rate has increased to 10.27%, far above what health officials hope for.

The state has recorded a total of 55,536 confirmed cases and at least 1,039 deaths.

Gov. Jim Justice and four top officials received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine live on camera on Monday. He said he wanted to demonstrate the safety of the vaccine, even as many other governors wait for their turn in line behind first responders.

West Virginia expects to receive tens of thousands of doses a week initially, ramping up in the future as Moderna looks to soon gain federal emergency use authorization for its vaccine.

Gov. Justice, Pandemic Team Get COVID Vaccine On Camera To Encourage Public Trust

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and others leading the state’s response to the ongoing pandemic received some of the first doses of Pfizer’s vaccine during a Monday evening live stream event.

Those getting the vaccine included state coronavirus czar Dr. Clay Marsh, Department of Health and Human Services Sec. Bill Crouch, state health officer Dr. Anyne Amjad and Maj. Gen. James Hoyer of the West Virginia National Guard.

“The last 10 months have been tough on a lot of people, especially those that we’ve lost — and all their loved ones, “ Justice said. “We can never have more compassion or should be saying more and more prayers for those we lost. It’s been tough, it’s really been tough. We’re going to get through this.”

The pandemic response team received the vaccine from Krista Capeheart, who serves as the director of professional and regulatory affairs at the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy and an associate professor at West Virginia University’s School of Pharmacy.

During the event, Justice said some doses went out earlier Monday at Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston, where Dr. Kishore Challa was the first person in the state to receive the vaccine.

“Don’t be afraid of the vaccine, be afraid of the virus,” Challa said.

Officials with WVU Medicine — the largest healthcare provider in the state — have said they will begin inoculations Tuesday for high-priority employees.

“It’s not about delivering vaccines, it’s about vaccinating people,” said Marsh, before being injected with the first of two doses needed to complete the inoculation process.

A second shot of Pfizer’s vaccine is needed 21 days after the first. For another vaccine developed by Moderna — now awaiting federal approval by the Food and Drug Administration — a second shot is needed 28 days after the initial dose.

Marsh outlined the research and evaluation process that led to the vaccine’s approval.

“The people of West Virginia should feel safe that this is a very effective and a very safe vaccine,” Marsh said. “It has undergone very thorough evaluation by a number of scientific panels, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control.”

As the state’s top health expert in the Justice administration’s response to the pandemic, Marsh also attempted to dispel rumors that the vaccine causes sterility or other adverse effects.

As the livestreamed event came to a close, Justice urged the state’s elderly population to get tested if they show any symptoms at all.

“If you’re over 65 years of age, I don’t care what kind of shape you’re in. If you’re in bad, good, whatever it may be — and you have any symptom of a cold or anything bad — a headache, anything. I don’t care what it is, you’ve got to go get tested,” Justice said. “If we’re going to stop this, you’ve got to go get tested.”

The Associated Press reported that the White House reversed a plan Sunday to vaccinate top government officials while essential workers and nursing home patients await first doses.

President Donald Trump tweeted that he was not scheduled to take the vaccine but looked “forward to doing so at the appropriate time.”

Bill Lee, the 61-year-old Republican governor of Tennessee, recently said he will take the shot when it is “available to the folks in my population sector.” In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert, 73, and his soon-to-be successor, have dispelled rumors that political leaders will receive vaccine favoritism.

It could be months before the general public has access to a vaccine, according to health experts in West Virginia.

The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.

House Passes Bill to Help Volunteer Fire Departments

With the passage of their budget bill behind them, members of the House are working their way through a number of bills left on their agenda this legislative session. West Virginia Public Broadcasting took a closer look at two of the bills approved in the chamber Thursday.

Seventeen Senate bills were on third reading in the House Thursday and put to a final vote.

One of those was Senate Bill 255, which changes how vacancies in political offices are filled. The bill would require the appointed person be from the same party as the previous office at the time of his or her resignation, not at the time of election.

As it came through the Senate, several senators pointed to former Sen. Daniel Hall as the bill’s motivation.

Hall was a Democrat when elected to the chamber in 2012, but after the 2014 election, the senator switched parties, giving Republicans the majority in that chamber for the first time in over 80 years. In 2016, Hall resigned from the body and the West Virginia Supreme Court was left to rule on which party would fill that vacancy.

The bill passed on a vote of 87 to 10 in the House. All the no votes were from Democrats and from the single Independent member in the chamber.

Another bill considered in the House, Senate Bill 636, requires the State Fire Commission to begin a pilot program to address any problems within the state’s volunteer fire departments. These issues would be in the areas of training, recruitment, or retention.

Delegate Joe Statler, a Republican from Monongalia County, says volunteer firefighters are the first line of defense in the state, but many struggle to keep their doors open.

Republican Amy Summers of Taylor County questioned Statler about whether this pilot program might end up hurting the volunteer fire departments instead of helping.

“You don’t think that there’s any way that this pilot project could then say to these volunteer fire departments…you can’t function anymore, because you’ve been proven that…you’re not effective, or something of that nature,” Summers asked, “you think this is gonna help the volunteer departments succeed?”

“I actually do believe that it will help,” Statler answered, “If everybody goes into it with the attitude that we’re going to do what we can do to see where we have all these rules and regulations and all this training, and everything else in place, that I believe that this can be a good thing. My biggest fear is, is how many might want to try to get on the pilot program, and we can’t sustain that many people trying to pilot.”

Senate Bill 636 passed 95 to 3.