Someone will pay for the flu vaccine shortage, and that someone may well be you.
Your employees' health, their productivity this winter and your bottom line could all suffer.
Small, effective steps offer both protection against the flu and, more importantly, a blueprint for managing soaring health care costs.
You might be wondering, "I have young, healthy workers. Does the flu really affect my business?"
The answer is yes. The flu results in millions of days of lost work each year.
The flu vaccine is an effective tool in minimizing your losses. A clinical study reports these benefits of immunizing healthy workers without any other medical diagnoses between age 18 and 64, the same group we're asking to forgo the vaccination this year:
- 25 percent decrease in upper respiratory infections
- 43 percent decrease in absenteeism from the flu
- 36 percent decrease in absenteeism from all causes
- 44 percent decrease in doctor visits for flu-like symptoms
The direct cost savings associated with the flu vaccine, including savings of direct medical costs and absenteeism as employees stay home to take care of themselves or sick family member, is $46.50 per each employee vaccinated. That does not include the employees with chronic medical conditions and the indirect cost of sick employees who report to work, productivity impaired by illness.
The year this study was performed was a "good flu" year. During bad flu years, the benefits of vaccination increase. We don't know what we face in the upcoming months.
So what can you do since most of your employees won't have access to the vaccine? Your major solution lies in the hands of your employees.
Encourage hand washing. It's not high-tech, but it's highly effective at preventing colds and flu.
Every surface that you touch from counters to door handles to books to money is teeming with bacteria and viruses. In fact, many viruses can live for long periods of time on a dry, warm surface. As you touch these surfaces, the germs adhere to your hands. Then when you touch your nose or mouth or rub your eyes, you transport the germs into an environment that is perfect for them to grow and multiply.
Hand washing with soap and water is a mechanical process that removes the viruses and bacteria from the surface of your hands. Skip the antibiotic soap. Bacteria divide quickly and reshuffle their DNA to create another strain of bacteria resistant to the soap that's even more capable of making you sick. And most colds and flu are caused by viruses, which antibiotic soaps will not touch.
Surgeons have elevated hand washing into a ritual that's as complex as a formal tea ceremony. You don't need to do that; just rub soap on your hands for the amount of time it takes to sing the ABC song.
If you're thinking "we already do that," think again.
A recent clinical study reported that although more than 95 percent of people say that they wash their hands after using a public rest room, up to 30 percent of patrons directly observed in airport rest rooms did not. Maybe that explains the colds so often seen in travelers.
The critical role of hand washing in the prevention of infection is a relatively modern idea. During the Civil War, more lives were lost to infection than on the battleground. In the mid-1800s Dr. Ignac Semmelweis, a Hungarian obstetrician, made a revolutionary recommendation. At that time, one in four women whose babies were delivered by doctors at a hospital in Vienna died of childbed fever. He observed that the death rate was highest among doctors who did internal exams on women after working in the morgue. After doctors routinely wash their hands, the death rate dropped from 25 percent to below 1 percent.
The immune system is the ultimate homeland security system, and getting a vaccine raises the threat level for a specific viral terrorist. The fight against a virus offers long-term protection, which explains why you only get the chicken pox once in your life. Just as chicken pox does not protect you against mumps, last year's flu shot or even a full-blown case of flu may not protect you this year. Each year the virus mutates.
It's not the flu vaccine itself that puts a protective bubble around you; the flu shot is an advisory system that puts your immune system on alert, like raising the national threat level to Code Orange. Ultimately it's your own immune system that wages war, just as our country's defense system responds to changes in the threat level. The limited vaccines will be offered to those whose immune system needs the extra heads up for a successful defense.
Good overall health supports your immune system. Eat a balanced diet, get plenty of rest, drink plenty of water and get regular exercise. Some use supplements to boost the immune system; studies are still under way to asses their quantitative benefit.
The dark cloud of the flu vaccine shortage has a silver lining. This short chapter mirrors the bigger health-care drama. Doctors do something to patients to keep them healthy, like injecting a vaccine. Patients count on doctors to take charge of their health. Then resources become scarce and the medical intervention is rationed. Patients feel lost, as they have forgotten their own power in shaping their health. The solution is a simple, accessible, low-tech and inexpensive action: hand washing. It's not something the doctor does for your employees; it's something your employees do for themselves. Creative problem-solvers like The Leapfrog Group and the King County Healthcare Advisory Task Force place employee education at the top of the strategic plan in the war against strangling health-care costs.
The flu vaccine shortage offers practice with the most powerful tool we have to halt soaring health care costs that erode business profits: put your employees' health into their own hands.
Contact us if you have any questions.
