Wellmont mandates flu shots for all of its hospital employees

BRISTOL, Tenn. – A local health care worker might end up losing his job if he doesn’t comply with his company’s new mandate that employees get a flu shot.

“There’s no bending: It’s either do it or bye,” said Jason Kaylor, a nurse at the Bristol Regional Medical Center’s intensive care unit who told the Bristol Herald Courier that he’d rather not get a shot this year.

Earlier this month, the Wellmont Health System announced a new policy that requires the 700 people who work at its nine Mountain Empire hospitals including the Bristol Regional Medical Center to get a flu shot by Dec. 1.

Failure to get one of the shots, which the health system has been giving to its employees for free since Monday, will result in that person’s immediate dismissal unless he or she has a valid health or religious reason against immunization.

“This is about protecting our patients,” Wellmont Chief Medical Officer Dale Sargent said Friday, as he defended the policy. What one doctor or nurse might think is a slight cold, he said, has the potential to have a huge impact on a patient with a weak immune system.

A personal preference

During a Friday interview, Kaylor said he does not have a medical or religious reason to avoid getting a flu shot, but he doesn’t want to out of what he called a “personal preference.”

He’s never had a flu shot in the past, nor wanted to get one, and despite a cavalier attitude about getting immunized, Kayor said he can’t remember the last time he’s come down with the flu. He’s also worried he might end up getting sick after he gets immunized, a risk present with any type of flu shot but something Kaylor said is especially worrisome this year because the current batch of shots contain both the seasonal and H1N1 Swine flu strains.

While he’s probably the first Wellmont employee to publicly express his reservations about the new policy, Kaylor said, he’s not the only person who’s against it and can think of a handful of people who feel the same way.

“They should give us the option,” Kaylor said, adding that people who come to the hospital as inpatients are given the option to get a flu shot when they’re admitted and if they don’t want to take it they don’t have to take it.

Patient safety

Sargent said he’s heard a few complaints about the new policy, but most of the health system’s employees have been happy to comply.

“Our participation has really been good,” he said. “We’ve had a few people raise some concerns about going the mandatory route, but we’ve had a lot of other people go ahead and get their shots.”

Sargent said one of the reasons it’s important for health care workers to get flu shots is because they are one of the most unlikely groups to miss work. He cited one study that showed 70 percent of them will come into work even if they have the flu. While this level of dependability is normally considered an asset, Sargent said, it quickly becomes a problem when considering the number of patients they treat who are in a vulnerable condition or might be coming down with the flu themselves.

Given the uncertainty of this year’s flu season and how devastating last year’s flu season was, Sargent said, it only made sense for the health system to start requiring its employees to get their flu shots.

The rule does not apply to people who have a physical condition preventing them from getting a flu shot, for instance if they’re allergic to eggs and might develop a strong allergic reaction to the immunization, or if they have religious reasons against the practice.

He said those people will instead be required to wear a surgical mask whenever they come within six feet of a patient who is being treated at the hospital.

“Absent that,” Sargent said, repeating his company’s flu shot policy, “as of Dec. 1, if you have not had a flu shot then you will not be able to come to work.”

 Nothing new

Wellmont’s flu shot policy “is nothing new” in the overall scheme of the company’s employee regulations or in the overall health care environment, Sargent said. The company’s employees must prove they’ve had all of their childhood immunizations before they can even start working at one of its hospitals, he said, and they must get tested for tuberculosis each year to keep their jobs with the company.

Several health care groups have come out in favor of requiring health care workers to get a flu shot, he said, including the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Further, Wellmont isn’t the only health care provider that requires its employees to get a flu shot, according to the Immunization Action Coalition, which maintains a list of 64 hospitals and health care companies in 25 states that require their employees to get vaccinated for the flu each year.

That group includes the U.S. Department of Defense, which requires civilian health care employees to get a flu shot if they provide care to patients in a military treatment facility.

It also includes the Cook County Health and Hospitals System in Oak Park, Ill., and the Garland Health Department in Garland Texas.

 Recommended, not required

The list does not include the Mountain States Health Alliance, which operates 13 hospitals in the Mountain Empire including the Johnson City Medical Center and the Johnston Memorial Hospital in Abingdon, Va.

“We do not require our team members to get a flu shot,” Mountain States spokesman James Watson said. “We think that they should get a flu shot but we aren’t going to make them go out and get one.”

Watson said his company requires its employees to watch a video explaining why it’s important to get a flu shot. The health system hopes its employees will remember this video when it offers them free flu shots, Watson said.

“If they don’t do it for themselves then they should do it for the people they work with,” Watson said as he continued to explain his company’s policy on flu shots before asking how Wellmont’s new initiative was being received.

Tom Skinner, a senior public affairs officer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, echoed a similar message when he explained his agency’s stance on flu shots.

“[Health care workers] are recommended to get vaccinated each year not only as a means of protecting themselves from flu but as a means of protecting their patients,” Skinner wrote in an e-mail he sent to the Herald Courier on Friday.

But while the federal agency strongly recommends that health care workers get a flu shot, he said, the CDC stops short of requiring them to follow the practice.

“That decision should be left up to each institution taking into account various circumstances that impact such decisions,” Skinner said. 

gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518