Hospitals won't hire smokers

Cigarette smokers and other tobacco users need not apply for jobs at Bon Secours Virginia hospitals, surgery centers and doctors' offices.

Starting Nov. 30, the health system will not hire people who test positive for nicotine during pre-employment screening.

"They can re-apply, so we are not telling them they can't ever work for Bon Secours," said Cindy Stutts, administrative director for employee wellness and employee assistance at Bon Secours Richmond Health System.

She said people will be given information on resources to help them quit.

"So if they test positive and are interested in quitting, they can do so and then reapply in six months," Stutts said.

The policy does not apply to the approximately 12,000 people already employed by the health system in Virginia. Employees who smoke or use other tobacco products are provided help to quit, and employees who are tobacco-free get a financial credit in their paychecks.

Bon Secours hospitals in the Richmond area include St. Francis and Memorial Regional medical centers and Richmond Community and St. Mary's hospitals.

"We want to be a place of wellness, a culture of wellness, so we have initiated this nicotine-free selection process," said Bonnie Shelor, Bon Secours Virginia senior vice president for human resources.

Other hospitals across the country have in recent years adopted similar no-nicotine policies. Among them: Baylor Health Care System in Dallas, which starting in January will not hire nicotine users, and the Cleveland Clinic, which instituted such a policy several years ago.

Such policies are not without critics, however, who question whether they intrude on worker rights and even discriminate against those rank-and-file employees least able to make healthy behavior changes.

HCA Virginia and the VCU Health System ban smoking on their medical campuses but don't reject employees who use tobacco away from work.

"We do not screen new hires for smoking, however HCA Virginia does offer financial incentives to encourage employee wellness," said spokeswoman Karen Nelson.

At the VCU Health System, applicants are told that the health system is tobacco-free.

Maria Curran, VCU Health System vice president for human resources and family care, said: "We do not ban hiring smokers, nor do we test employees for nicotine use. We are focusing our efforts on smoking cessation and supporting staff, patients and visitors with education and products to enable them to quit."

The Bon Secours no-nicotine policy applies to people using cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, snuff or smokeless tobacco, pipes, cigars and other sources of tobacco. It applies to hires across the board, including top management applicants.

People using nicotine gum or patches to help them quit smoking will also be rejected. The screening will take place after a person is offered a job but before they are hired. Pre-employment drug testing will add nicotine to the substances tested for in urine.

Since Bon Secours facilities went tobacco-free in 2009, about 300 employees have quit smoking, Shelor said. About 10 percent of current employees smoke.

Shelor credited wellness policies for stabilizing employee health-care costs, a factor cited by other systems that have implemented such a policy.

"We haven't seen a reduction, but we are not seeing the increase that we anticipated over the last couple of years," Shelor said.

According to federal health data, in 2010, about 19 percent of adults were current smokers, down slightly from 2005. Men are more likely than women to smoke, and smoking rates vary by race, income and education level.