Kansas officials reject limiting nurses’ extra pay to hospitals without vaccine rules
Kansas lawmakers and business leaders voted down a proposal Wednesday to prohibit nurses at hospitals with vaccine mandates from receiving extra pay amid the COVID-19 surge.
The Strengthening People and Revitalizing Kansas (SPARK) task force executive committee rejected a plan to stop hospitals with mandates from participating in an initiative providing up to $50 million in federal aid to thousands of nurses. Gov. Laura Kelly and top legislators approved allocating the funding last week but left SPARK to create rules for the program.
The panel remained uncertain Wednesday about other details for distributing the money. Questions included whether hospitals should have more flexibility in how they spend the funds and if aid should be tied to a facility’s profitability. The committee — comprised of state officials and business leaders — decided to give the business members until Friday to develop a proposal.
But the split over vaccine mandates was perhaps the biggest divide. Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, pushed for restrictions against funds going to hospitals with “counterproductive” mandates and policies, which he said included vaccine mandates.
He raised the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision in 2019 that found a right to an abortion in the state constitution as part of a right to personal autonomy.
“The truth is if you can apply personal autonomy to a two-body situation where someone’s pregnant, you certainly can apply it to this,” Masterson said. “And then you have a whole constitutional argument about coercing somebody to do something against their belief or maintain their employment.”
The 7-member committee voted 2-5 against including a prohibition on vaccine requirements. House Speaker Ron Ryckman, an Olathe Republican, voiced concern about excluding nurses at the University of Kansas Health System, which is requiring workers to get vaccinated. Masterson said hospitals with mandates would have had time to rethink their policies before funding went out.
Hospitals have discretion over how to distribute the additional pay between now and the end of the year but are limited to increases of no more than $13 an hour or $25,000 a year under federal guidelines. According to the current plan, hospitals would serve only as a “pass through” for the dollars, meaning they wouldn’t be able to retain funding for other purposes.
Ryckman urged the committee to look at whether more freedom can be given to hospitals in spending dollars, however.
“I’m concerned … that we’re not allowing the flexibility to our administrators, to work with our nurses to see what they want with how to spend this money,” Ryckman said.
Secretary of Administration DeAngela Burns-Wallace and Jon Rolph, president and CEO of Thrive Restaurant Group, emphasized that the aid is designed to reach nurses quickly and help hospitals retain staff.
“The temptation will be to complicate this,” Rolph said.
The committee ended by voting unanimously to direct its business members to come up with a plan by Friday that would address questions about flexibility. Those members include, Rolph, who also sits on the Kansas Board of Regents, BKD Wichita managing partner Bill Pickert, and Greg Orman, who ran for governor as an independent in 2018.
This story was originally published September 8, 2021 at 3:12 PM with the headline "Kansas officials reject limiting nurses’ extra pay to hospitals without vaccine rules."
