Flu Vaccination Recommended for All Health Care Workers

In June, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) approved an infection-control standard that requires accredited organizations to offer influenza vaccinations to staff, volunteers, and licensed independent practitioners with close patient contact.

This follows the February release of a report by two advisory committees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommending that all health care providers be vaccinated annually against influenza. The report noted that health care personnel who are clinically or subclinically infected can transmit influenza virus to other people. Influenza outbreaks in hospitals and long-term care facilities have been associated with low vaccination rates among health care personnel and higher vaccination levels among staff have been associated with a lower incidence of nosocomial influenza cases.

Despite these compelling statistics, nationally, only 36 percent of health care workers receive a flu vaccination. Meanwhile, every year more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications, and nearly 36,000 people die from the flu, according to the CDC.

Education of health care workers is an important component of the CDC recommendations and was a primary focus of the 2006 AMA Influenza Summit, held in June. Education leads to well-informed nurses and direct-care providers who can better inform patients about the benefits of flu vaccination.

The MMS, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and MassPRO, revised its annual Employee Flu Immunization Campaign Kit, which is distributed to hospitals and nursing homes to increase rates of health care worker immunization. The 2006 version of the kit will be available in September at www.massmed.org/flu_kit.