AMA asked to encourage health worker flu shots

Some believe the only way to make sure health care professionals get vaccinated is to make it mandatory.

By Beth Wilson, AMNews contributor. June 13, 2005.

With an eye toward the upcoming flu season, the California Medical Assn. is urging the American Medical Association to strengthen its stand on flu shots for health care workers.

Current AMA policy calls for hospital medical staffs to delineate under what circumstances immunizations should be administered. The CMA proposal, which is set to be presented and debated during the AMA House of Delegates meeting that begins June 18, asks the AMA to work to ensure that hospitals possess a system for measuring or maximizing the number of health care workers receiving the vaccine.

Ronald Bangasser, MD, past president of the California Medical Assn. and a member of the joint AMA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Influenza Vaccine Summit, said proponents of increasing or mandating flu vaccinations for health care workers considered pursuing state or federal legislation, but opted to approach the AMA and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

"We thought it would be easier and quicker to put an accreditation standard that hospitals have to have a program to encourage and increase the number of health care worker vaccinations," he said. "We could get it done faster by getting it on the hospital radar screens."

By receiving flu vaccines, workers would reduce the flu's transmission to patients, reduce transmission among staff and therefore reduce the number of staff sick days, which also can adversely affect patient care and death rates.