COVID-19 surge in hospitalizations is ‘quite manageable,’ Northwell Health CEO says

Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the recent COVID-19 surge in hospitalizations, Omicron concerns, and vaccine mandates.

Video Transcript

- Let's bring in the head of New York's largest health care provider. We've got Michael Dowling joining us. He is a CEO of Northwell Health. And Michael, we've heard so many of these stories across the country. But give me a sense of what's happening in your hospitals. How are you coping with this one-two punch, on the one hand, getting more and more patients through the door, but also with your staff having to deal with these infections?

MICHAEL DOWLING: We are doing quite well. I mean, it is very manageable. You know, sometimes people think that it's very crazy. And of course it's somewhat difficult because you are in the middle of a pandemic. But it is quite manageable. We're staying very, very calm. And there is some very, very good news that I think is worth noticing.

One is that, while our numbers have increased-- Today I have 1,570 COVID cases. That's a big increase over about two weeks ago. But it seems to be flattening a little bit over the last couple of days. But the good news is that people are not as sick as they were before.

The percentage of people in the ICU is basically staying very low and flat. And the numbers of people being intubated is very, very low. And this is completely an improved circumstance from what it was a year and a half ago.

So you've got to put this whole thing in perspective. On the staff issue, we are managing. It is a little bit stressful. And I have been walking the floors of each of the hospitals. And when you do that, you find that staff are a little bit tired, but they're committed. And there is no crisis here.

I do have about 2,500 staff out at the moment. But keep in mind that I have about 78,000 people. So you know, 2,500 is you 2% of my overall staff. And we have a big health system, so I can move staff around.

So the bottom line is it is quite manageable. It is not crazy. I do think that we will have another two weeks of this. And then I think it's going to slow down quite a bit. We may be close to the peak right now.

- And Michael, too, I mean, when we talk about, I guess, some of the issues that got us here in terms of exploding cases, obviously, not good in terms of the backlog of tests and the inability for a lot of people out there to get tests. I mean, it's not as if it was a surprise that we might be dealing with a lot of issues around COVID heading into the holidays.

Talk to me about maybe what some of those frustrations look like, maybe frustrations you're hearing from staff that are burned out in the way that maybe some of that was fumbled leading up to this last surge.

MICHAEL DOWLING: Well, first of all with my staff, I required all staff to be vaccinated. I was one of the first out of the box to do this, way back. So every single one of my staff are vaccinated. Not everybody has got the booster yet, but we are working on that diligently right now because you're not fully vaccinated until you do get the booster in my view.

So from a staff point of view and vaccination, everybody is vaccinated. Now, I did lose some staff because of that, because they made a decision that they were not going to comply with a requirement of employment. So that has helped me.

I do hire about 250 new staff a week. That number is increasing, in fact, each week. So I don't have a problem getting new staff to join. On the testing side, now the more testing you do, obviously, the more positivity you will have. That's an automatic outcome of doing more testing. And we probably should have been more prepared with more sites for testing.

We have opened up quite a number. But you know, this is an unbelievably highly transmissible virus. And that may have caught us off guard a little bit. But you know, we can always argue that we should have been a little bit more prepared, overall, nationally, on this. But we have a lot of testing sites working quite well at the moment.

And by the way, one last point I want to make is that the more people who are positive, the more herd immunity you're going to have. So when everybody gets positive, you have immunity, your community immunity, which is not a bad thing.

I focus mostly on the hospitalization numbers, not necessarily what goes on in the community. The long lines are an inconvenience, but I focus on the hospital side. And the hospital side is not as bad at all as it was a year ago and nothing like what we had two years ago.

- Michael, going back to what you just said about your staffing, how many workers have you actually lost because of failure to comply with the vaccine mandate? Do you have a number? What percentage?

MICHAEL DOWLING: I lost about 1.5%. I lost close to 1,800 employees. We did give medical exemptions, but those were the only exemptions we gave because I believe very, very firmly that if you're going to be treating patients in any one of our facilities, you have to be vaccinated. I don't want unvaccinated people serving the public. I don't think it's appropriate.

Now, I know this has been a problem in other parts of the country. And of course, it's very political. There's lots of debates about it. And I've been under a lot of criticism, in part, because of what we did. But I accept that criticism because it was the right thing to do. If you're working in health care, and you're taking care of patients, you should be vaccinated, no excuses.

- Michael Dowling, Northwell Health CEO. We always appreciate having you on the show. Thanks so much for making the time today.