The requirement that Colorado health care workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 will be allowed to expire next month, state health officials said Wednesday, ending a successful and at times contentious mandate that contributed to high vaccination levels among providers and staff.

The decision, conveyed to the Colorado Board of Health on Wednesday, ends the rule nearly a year after the board adopted it at the urging of Gov. Jared Polis.

Officials from the state Department of Public Health and Environment told the board Wednesday that all health workers who were going to get vaccinated had done so by now and that they wanted to “balance the necessity of high vaccination rates with the business needs of health care facilities.”

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In a statement to the Gazette, Polis thanked the board “for their data-based nimble response to the changing needs of Colorado including our healthcare workforce needs.”

Even with the state’s rule expiring on July 14, many Colorado facilities will still be subject to a federal vaccination requirement: Roughly a third of the state’s health facilities are subject to a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule mandating vaccinations, a health department official told the board. Organizations can also still require that their workers be vaccinated, as Denver Health and UCHealth have. 

In a statement Wednesday, a UCHealth spokeswoman said the system was not planning to change its vaccination requirement.

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Still, the state’s decision means two-thirds of facilities will no longer be required by the state to employ only vaccinated – or exempted – workers. Though the rule had received broad support, its 100% uptake requirement drew concern from some health care organizations that warned that the mandate’s threshold was “aspirational” and would harm their already-stressed staffing levels.

Despite that concern, statistics presented Wednesday demonstrated the mandate’s efficacy and its limited negative impact on staffing levels: When the rule was first approved, roughly 70% of health workers were vaccinated. As of June 1, that rate had improved to 94%. What’s more, the health department’s Anne Strawbridge told the board, only 1% of employees – a broad group that includes not only front-line providers but officer workers, executives and support personnel – had left their job because of the requirement.

Indeed, before Wednesday’s meeting, the rule seemed set to endure. Health department officials told the board in March that though they were still gathering feedback from “stakeholders,” they intended to return to the board in May to ask that the vaccine requirement be made permanent. 

But the topic wasn’t brought before the board in May, and on Wednesday, Strawbridge told its members the rule would be allowed to expire in a month. She said the share of health care workers who’ve been vaccinated has remained steady for the past three months. She said that indicated “all employees who intend to get vaccinated have done so and those who sought an exemption have done so.”

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Despite the rule’s success, Strawbridge said, the department realized “that many facilities continue to struggle and the vaccine requirement is one aspect of a very complicated issue,” in terms of staffing. 

In November, The Gazette spoke with representatives from every major hospital system in the state, all of whom said the vaccine mandate had had a minimal effect on staffing. The Colorado Hospital Association said it was a “very small piece” of staffing shortages. Still, some health officials have said it could impede facilities’ ability to hire new employees.

Though this mandate will end, Strawbridge suggested that some rule related to COVID-19 vaccinations may later be instituted. A newly passed law will require the health department to draft rules on staffing standards, including some related to infection control. No decisions have been made yet, she told the board, but “the department envisions that COVID-19 vaccinations will be part of the conversation.”

When the health board enacted the rule in August, Denver was fresh off announcing its own vaccine requirement for a broad swath of city and public-facing workers. The city ended that requirement in February.