Hospitals to require worker flu shots

The rules come as state health regulators are slated to unveil the latest flu vaccination rates today among the state’s 71 acute care hospitals.

The state’s relatively low vaccination rate - 68 percent of workers were immunized in the 2009-2010 season - has long frustrated public health leaders.

“It’s a critical patient-safety issue,’’ said Dr. Alan Woodward, past president of the Massachusetts Medical Society and a member of the state Public Health Council, an appointed panel of doctors, consumer advocates, and professors will discuss how to get more workers vaccinated today.

“Health care workers are very prone to be vectors, transmitting the disease to others, and they can be infectious before they show symptoms,’’ Woodward said.

Hoping to boost statewide rates, the 10-hospital coalition called the Eastern Massachusetts Healthcare Initiative adopted a statement in July in which member hospitals agreed to develop mandatory vaccination policies for all health care personnel, with approved medical exemptions as the only exception.

Included in that coalition are Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Lahey Clinic, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Massachusetts General Hospital, Tufts Medical Center, and Winchester Hospital.

Current state rules require hospital workers to be vaccinated or to sign a form declining the shot. Those rules allow for medical and religious exceptions.

But Dr. Kenneth Sands, senior vice president for health care quality at Beth Israel Deaconess and chairman of the coalition, said stricter rules that allow only medical exceptions, such as a signed doctor’s form indicating a worker’s allergy to the vaccine, can create significantly higher vaccination rates.

“Most of these places [nationally] that have gotten to 100 percent vaccination rates either have people receiving vaccine or having a documented reason to not get a vaccine,’’ he said.