Intermountain Healthcare delivers mandatory flu shot policy, others strive for higher immunization rates

SALT LAKE CITY — Health care systems across the nation are changing their immunization policies to protect the public, beginning with mandatory flu shots for employees.

Changes at a large Utah health care employer are coming on the heels of a recommendation from local health officials, as well as the Immunization Action Coalition, which works closely with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Early this month, Intermountain Healthcare officials handed down an edict that all employees must receive a flu shot each year or face disciplinary action. It's an act that Dr. Brent Wallace, Intermountain's chief medical officer, said will help to fulfill their mission, "to provide the best care to our patients."

"It's the next step in working to provide the protection for our patients that we need to have and making sure we do everything possible that they not come into one of our facilities without influenza and leave with it," he said.

The new policy, which will take effect Aug. 1, is in line with others regarding communicable diseases, making the MMR and Hepatitis B vaccines required for Intermountain Healthcare employees.

"Requirements such as this are becoming a national standard and we have identified more than 80 other health systems around the nation that have instituted similar requirements," Wallace said.

In addition to health care workers, he said Intermountain also encourages members of the community to receive the flu shot every year.

"There is good science and substantial data showing the importance and safety of the flu immunization," Wallace said.

Employees will still be allowed an opportunity for exemption, based on religion and/or medical reasons to not get the vaccine. But one specialized care nurse at Intermountain's McKay-Dee Hospital said she is completely opposed to the flu shot for ethical reasons and therefore faces the risk of termination if she doesn't comply.

"I don't believe in vaccinations," the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said. "It goes against anything I've ever known."

She said she is often ridiculed for her beliefs, but holds to them and doesn't immunize her own children because of all of the supposed risks involved.

"Many of my co-workers ask me why I don't support immunizations and it boils down to this, 'I am more afraid of brain damage than I am of the chicken pox or the flu,'" she said.