In a study, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers compared the proportion of hospitals requiring healthcare personnel to receive annual influenza vaccination between 2013 and 2017.
Researchers conducted a national survey study that polled 1,062 infection preventionists from nationally representative samples of all Veterans Affairs and non-VA hospitals in the country. The overall response rate for the 2013 survey was 69.3 percent and 59.1 percent in 2017.
Of all responding hospitals, mandatory flu vaccination requirements for healthcare personnel increased from 37.1 percent in 2013 to 61.4 percent in 2017.
At non-VA hospitals, the flu vaccine requirement policies increased from 44.3 percent in 2013 to 69.4 percent in 2017. However, at VA hospitals, there was no major change. In 2013, 1.3 percent of VA hospitals required healthcare personnel to receive yearly flu vaccines, and that figure increased to 4.1 percent in 2017.