September 12, 2011
Check out today’s Modern Healthcare (subscription required) for a guest commentary by Michael Burgess (R-Texas), Ramanan Laxminarayan (CDDEP), and Philip Polgreen (University of Iowa) on why hospital managers should prioritize flu shots this flu season. Flu shots not only prevent cases of the flu, they also cut down on the demand for antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections associated with the flu. In addition, they have the potential to reduce the number of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions that occur during flu season, when patients ask for antibiotics to treat viral infections. Flu shots should make sense to hospital managers on a few levels first, by reducing antibiotic demand they cut down on antibiotic resistance when there are few new and novel antibiotics in the pipeline, and second, they positively impact the bottom line. Limiting the spread of antibiotic-resistant hospital infections saves both lives and hospital resources.
But, the commentary also points out that offering free flu shots to hospital workers may not be enough to encourage everyone to get the vaccine. Instead, research out of the University of Iowa suggests that monitoring and reporting rates of vaccine uptake by hospital department may boost levels hospital-wide.
Read more: some recent Extending the Cure research on antibiotic prescriptions during flu season and the guest commentary on Modern Healthcare.
