Aggressive care management in a health maintenance organization can achieve vaccination rates exceeding sixty percent of their members. A prospective study of healthy, working, young adults also demonstrated substantial health benefits and cost savings from the influenza vaccination. Recent advances in rapid diagnostic testing for Influenza A permits physicians to identify likely cases and quickly implement anti-viral therapy to control outbreaks in the long term care setting. There are excellent guidelines and reports of such outbreak control in the literature. 1 Briefly outlined, the main recommendations follow.
Vaccination is most cost-effective when included as part of a routine health care encounter.
Institutional immunization programs. Hospital discharges from November through February each year. Influenza vaccination has a favorable side-effects profile. The most frequent side-effect is soreness around the vaccination site. Systemic symptoms of toxicity such as fever and myalgia are very infrequent.