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  Awards Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Ctr. Boston Medical Center Boston University Brigham and Women's Hospital Broad Institute Cambridge Health Alliance Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Ctr. Children's Hospital Boston Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Grants Harvard University Joslin Diabetes Center Lahey Clinic Mass. General Hospital Mass. Health Law McLean Hospital MIT New England Baptist Hospital Personnel Moves Public Health Research Short White Coat Tufts-New England Medical Center Tufts University UMass Memorial Medical Center University of Massachusetts VA Medical Centers    A Healthy Blog Running A Hospital Nature Network Boston SciBos - Corie Lok's blog Kevin, M.D. Blog, MD Dr. Flea's blog Nurse at small Your Child's Health Blog Healthy Children blog WBUR's CommonHealth Other Globe Blogs
Elizabeth Cooney is a health reporter for the Worcester Telegram &
Gazette.
Boston Globe Health and Science staff:
Scott Allen Alice Dembner Carey Goldberg Liz Kowalczyk Stephen Smith Colin Nickerson Beth Daley Karen Weintraub, Deputy Health and Science Editor, and Gideon Gil, Health and Science Editor. Short White Coat blogger Ishani Ganguli  |
« After loss of heart docs, Brigham recruits replacements | Main | Today's Globe: Dana-Farber sets $1B campaign, Tufts HMO cuts jobs, FDA pilots drug report cards » Tuesday, January 30, 2007More than half Boston hospital workers got flu shotsMore Boston hospital workers may be getting flu shots this season than the national average, but beyond that it’s hard to figure out how they measure up. Public health officials have been pushing for virtually all hospital workers to get flu shots because they can easily be exposed and infect vulnerable patients. But each of six hospitals that answered a White Coat Notes query today counts health care workers involved in direct patient care in its own way. And they don’t necessarily know who might have gotten a flu shot outside their hospitals' programs. Here are the results: Boston Medical Center: 71 percent "The national average is 38 percent," said Dr. Robert Goldszer, associate chief medical officer at Brigham and Women’s. "We feel we’re doing better than average, but we know we don’t have an accurate rate." Beth Israel has a broad definition of who comes into direct contact with patients. It’s not just the people who have day-to-day hands-on contact, but it also includes people who see patients face-to-face, such as ward secretaries, people who sit at the front desk in clinics, and workers who clean floors in patients’ rooms, said Dr. Sharon Wright, director of the infection control and hospital epidemiology program. Beth Israel tries to track who gets a flu shot elsewhere, she said, asking employees to use an internal web site to state explicitly why they are declining to get a flu shot. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations requires hospitals to at least offer flu shots. The Infectious Diseases Society of America recommends that hospitals and other health care facilities mandate flu shots for employees, except for religious or medical reasons. "JCAHO told us to immunize 100 percent of health care workers who don’t have a contraindication," Beth Israel's Wright said. "We’re trying to get to that 100 percent in three to five years. The goal this year was 60 percent and we did it." "Obviously we think everybody should get vaccinated against the flu, but it’s especially important for health care workers," he said. Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 08:32 PM
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