For Immediate Release
September 21, 2011
Elkridge, Md. — The Maryland Hospital Association (MHA) adopted a policy that endorses mandatory flu vaccination of health care workers in hospitals. Mandatory policies have been proven to boost vaccination rates, and the MHA policy position notes that its aim “is to protect the lives and welfare of patients and health care workers.”
In Maryland, all hospitals offer flu vaccines, free of charge and on site, to their employees. According to the Maryland Health Care Commission (MHCC), the average vaccination rate among hospital workers in the state has increased to 81.4 percent; 19 hospitals reported rates of 90 percent or above. The MHA Executive Committee, which acts as the Association’s Board of Directors, voted unanimously to adopt the policy.
“This policy is about the safety and well-being of our patients and the people that take care of them,” said MHA President & CEO Carmela Coyle. “Our goal every day is to make care as safe as we possibly can make it; mandatory vaccination of health care workers is a very important and proven way to ensure that patients and health care workers alike are protected from contracting the flu. Especially in the hospital setting, where sick patients whose immune systems are compromised can be very vulnerable to infections, protecting them from a potentially deadly flu virus should be mandatory. Our patients deserve nothing less.”
MHA’s policy includes tips on how hospitals can implement a mandatory vaccination policy. Those tips include defining the scope of the policy by category of health care worker (such as medical staff members, vendors, students, etc.) and a process to define and evaluate requests for medical and religious exemptions from the policy.
MHCC reports that 18 Maryland hospitals currently have a mandatory vaccine policy in place. Almost every Maryland hospital is moving toward a mandatory policy, with most expecting to have their policies in place by 2013. Moving to a mandatory policy within a hospital can take as much as a year.