The best shot at fighting the flu
IT'S FLU season. Do you know if your healthcare providers have been vaccinated? It's a question worth asking, because most workers in the healthcare industry have not had their flu shots. Last week, the Infectious Diseases Society of America recommended that hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and health centers require their employees to be vaccinated or to decline in writing for religious or medical reasons. Congress should authorize the US Department of Health and Human Services to tell providers to make flu vaccination routine or lose eligibility for reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid.
Each year, about 226,000 Americans become sick enough with the flu to require hospitalization, and 36,000 die of it. Yet fewer than 40 percent of healthcare workers get immunized, according to the society. The recommendation for mandatory vaccination is one of several the society makes in a report on preventive measures the country should take against both seasonal and pandemic flu.
Vaccinating healthcare workers is crucial because they often treat infected patients and can transmit the virus to vulnerable but uninfected individuals, especially the elderly and the very young. By establishing mandatory vaccination programs for seasonal flu, healthcare providers also would be better prepared to vaccinate their workers against a more deadly strain.
Scientists fear that the strain of avian flu now killing birds and occasionally human beings in many countries could mutate to become easily transmitted widely among humans. In 1918-19, such a pandemic flu killed tens of millions worldwide. Routine vaccinations of healthcare workers will also boost the vaccine industry, expanding its manufacturing capacity for the day when a pandemic flu strikes and the nation will need far more than the 80 million doses it now uses each year.
Some hospitals and other healthcare organizations manage to vaccinate a higher level of employees than the 40 percent average cited in the society's report. Massachusetts General Hospital says that as of December it had vaccinated 59 percent of its direct care workers, including 100 percent of its pediatric residents, 88 percent of medical residents, and 76 percent of its emergency department physicians. Still, 69 percent is not 100 percent.
One step in getting all health providers at or close to 100 percent is the new policy of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations to require that they at least offer flu shots to all workers. But full compliance will come only through action by Congress and Health and Human Services. A flu shot mandate is one of the most effective steps the nation could take to prepare for a pandemic and, at the same time, reduce the annual toll of the flu virus.
Correction -- An editorial yesterday misstated the percentage of direct care workers at Massachusetts General Hospital vaccinated against the flu. It is 59 percent.
