4 Ways HR Can Raise Flu Shot Compliance

Last week, Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced a public health emergency in the city of Boston in reaction to the 700 reported influenza cases so far this year and 18 related deaths, a figure that is already ten times last year's rate.

Last flu season 1 in 3 healthcare workers didn't get vaccinated, according to the CDC.

As a resident of the city of Boston, I am particularly interested in the steps hospitals have taken to increase employee vaccination rates.

Starting this year, hospital human resource departments are required to collect and submit employee flu vaccination rates in accordance with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services regulations. Flu shot stats for each employee will be published on Hospital Compare in July.

>>>VIEW SLIDESHOW

Mandating flu shots at the leadership level, and getting vaccinated if you have clinical duties, communicates to patients that you take your job, and their health, seriously. But even after establishing a mandatory flu shot policy, achieving compliance from a hospital staff still requires some strategizing.

After all, the time and resources spent collecting vaccination data on each and every employee at your facility, combined with the cost of potentially lost reimbursements and covering for of employees out sick while patient volumes are increasing means that the rate of labor healthcare spending is accelerating at the speed of Contagion.

Here are some strategies HR departments are implementing to increase their flu vaccine compliance rates this year, and why they might actually work:

1.Motivation from Above
At Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston's oldest and largest hospital, the occupational health services department emails managers every two weeks about the status of employees' incomplete flu shot compliance.

An email also goes to employees of "unknown" status, which represented around 5% of employees at MGH last flu season.

This year, the hospital's flu shot strategies focus on this small segment of the 23,000-member workforce, says Andrew Gottlieb, MSN/MPH, FNP-BC, the director of occupational health services at MGH. The email system delegates MGH's management of flu vaccination compliance from the ground-up, says Gottlieb.

If a healthcare worker won't get vaccinated for their friends or family, the greater community, the safety of the patients they treat, or themselves, hopefully they will get moving to stop being on their boss's to-nag list. If not, perhaps there's a bigger problem that needs addressing.

2. Peer Pressure
At MGH, nurses in each of the inpatient and outpatient clinics every year volunteer to be "Flu Champions"—they are stocked with vaccination equipment, compliance forms, posters, and communication materials to advertise facts vs. myths of getting vaccinated.

This isn't a strategy unique to MGH. Many hospitals have implemented employees vaccinating one another within different departments.

But it streamlines the vaccination process by providing a convenient "mini clinic" and allows HR to have grassroots flu shot campaigners interacting with peers every day. They stomp out myths with a single bound, and overcome fears of needles with comfort and camaraderie.

3.The Mask Alternative
Here's an option for all of those who have non-medical, non-religious excuses for not getting a vaccine: breath through a mask all day.

The Rhode Island Department of Health announced in October that healthcare workers must be vaccinated against the flu, except for medical or religious reasons. Its new rules include a mask policy, which mandates that any healthcare worker that has filed an exemption without a medical reason must wear a surgical face mask during instances of patient contact throughout the flu season, and face a fine each time they do not comply with this policy.

At MGH, this is the first flu season that a mask policy has been implemented, says Gottlieb.

Last year the mask policy was meant to be an incentive for people to get vaccinated, but it was never implemented. This year, the mask policy was implemented very early on, because of the high incidence of flu. Failure to wear a mask is not subject to a specific penalty, though—it's up to the manager to address it with their employees.

4.Humor
The most innovative way I've seen for increasing flu vaccine compliance comes from an injection of humor in the provider community. If patient safety isn't enough to convince hospital workers to get vaccinated, humiliation via parody may get the job done.

Zubin Damania, MD, a former hospitalist and the director of healthcare development for a Downtown Las Vegas revitalization project, has created hundreds of videos addressing public health education with humor. Here's the flu shot video he made for a company-wide meeting at Zappos last fall: