Health Workers Face Flu Vaccine, Or Else

Mandatory flu vaccination for health-care workers looks like an idea whose time has come.

Local health authorities and major hospital groups are giving up on more than a quarter-century of cajoling health workers to get vaccinated voluntarily. Increasingly they're saying: get vaccinated, wear a mask during flu season, or find another job.

So far New York State is the only state that's requiring hospital and clinic workers to get flu shots (or nasal squirts). But Hospital Corporation of America, the nation's leading hospital chain, mandates flu shots for its 120,000 workers. So do Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, MedStar Health in Baltimore/Washington, and now the UC Davis Health System does too.

Some require only seasonal flu vaccination, others are mandating vaccine against the new H1N1 virus when that's available.

 

Today, the Infectious Disease Society of America is throwing its weight behind mandatory vaccination of health-care workers against the new H1N1 flu. Those who refuse "should be required to wear masks or be reassigned away from direct patient care," says the group, which represents many hospital infectious disease doctors.

The IDSA came out for mandatory vaccination of health-care workers against seasonal flu in 2007.

People in public health and those who try to control infections in have been frustrated for years about the low uptake of flu vaccine among health care workers.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first said all health workers should get flu shots 28 years ago. The CDC has been saying it ever since. But more than half of all health care workers still go unvaccinated.

Still, the CDC isn't ready to give up on jawboning. CDC Director Thomas Frieden says this pandemic year isn't the time to make flu shots (or nasal squirts) mandatory.

Not surprisingly, there's pushback from health care workers, or at least their union leaders.

Earlier this week a group called the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), a coalition of labor unions, called on New York Health Commissioner Richard Daines to withdraw the state's new vaccine mandate. Officials there say they made the decision to require flu vaccine for health workers last year, before the pandemic.

Daines doesn't seem to be backing down. Jemma-Marie Hanson, a nurse who attended NYCOSH's meeting with the commissioner, says, "Commissioner Daines took the position that the train has left the station, it's never coming back."

Dr. Gus Birkhead, the deputy commissioner, says: "Yes, there's has been push-back from a number of groups on various grounds. Our position is this is a patient safety issue."