Influenza vaccination as a condition of employment for a large regional health care system.

Aurora Health Care (Aurora) is a large integrated delivery system in eastern Wisconsin/northern Illinois that serves over 1.2 million patients per year and has over 30,000 employees. Aurora adopted a policy of annual influenza vaccination as a condition of employment for all employees during May 2011, to commence with the 2011-2012 influenza season. The percentage of employees vaccinated against influenza had been below 100%-the rate recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The intervention increased the percentage of employees vaccinated to 97.7% in the first year of implementation, compared to 71% in 2010 (P < 0.00001). No medical or economic reactions to this intervention were determined to be unmanageable. Aurora recommends that health systems that currently fail to achieve 90% employee influenza vaccination rates adopt a similar process.