In a move that some will applaud as a consistent commitment to health and well-being appropriate for a medical center (and others will abhor as a paternalistic intrusion on privacy) a major Tennessee hospital announced it will no longer hire smokers.

As part of its health screening for all new hires, the Chattanooga-based Memorial Health Care System will test for illegal drugs, alcohol and, now... nicotine.

Evidence of enjoyment of tobacco will result in disqualification from the job. Applicants will then have to wait six months before applying again.

The policy, now in effect, only applies to new employees, not current ones.

"Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death and disease in the U.S. That's why it's our focus," Brian Lazenby, a spokesman for the hospital, tells DOTmed News.

According the National Institutes of Health, there are almost half a million smoking-related deaths in the U.S. each year.

The roots of Memorial's policy began two years ago with the Health Memorial initiative, which turned the health center into a tobacco-free campus. The ban on hiring smokers is a natural extension of that effort, according to Lazenby. "The goal was to look for ways to promote the health and wellness of our workforce and the community as a whole. This is another facet of that," he says.

Memorial is riding what could be a trend among elite hospitals. Cleveland Clinic put in a similar policy to ban hires of smokers in 2007, as did Akron Children's Hospital in 2008.

"I expect this will continue and more hospitals will do this," Lazenby says.

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