This video is NSFW.
Earlier this month, TriHealth employees faced a flu shot deadline. Get one or else, the Cincinnati health system said.
Apparently 150 people said no thanks, and the employer said buh-bye.
Inside an Automated Healthcare Practice: Redesigning Care Around People, Not Paperwork
By reducing administrative burden and redesigning workflows around human needs, it creates space for what matters most: connection between clinicians and patients.
Since that initial announcement, both sides have given in somewhat. The hospital system extended the deadline to next Monday and 82 people got the shot or provided a reasonable excuse as to why they can’t or won’t.
The interesting part of this story — aside from the risk of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and the unfounded fear of vaccines — is a Twitter campaign one guy waged against TriHealth. Kevin Allen’s first video was about the initial firings, but his second one was about how to contact each of TriHealth’s Twitter followers.
MedCity News follows TriHealth (because they are doing interesting work with population health and diabetes management) and I admit I read his tweet and clicked through to his video. I also watched the one above that explains step by step how to contact TriHealth’s followers and protest this policy. Allen is dedicated. He contacted so many TriHealth followers that Twitter sent him a message most of us will never see: he was over his daily limit of tweets.
He is a black helicopter, “The UN is coming to get us” kind of guy, and many people probably won’t make it past the opening music of either video (unless you are a fan of shouting). However, he has 71,045 followers to TriHealth’s 419. His how-to video has only 115 views.
The Power of Real World Data to Study Women’s Health at Scale
Veradigm examines key clinical trends, comorbidity profiles, and treatment trends across adolescence, reproductive years, and peri-/post-menopause. Download it today!
Whether or not this campaign takes off, TriHealth should address it. I didn’t see any mention of this flu shot policy on TriHealth’s Twitter feed or Facebook page.
TriHealth has a great social media presence — mentions of Movember, the Bengals, employee success stories — and they should use it to explain their side of the policy. They could post links to research about HAIs or the endless studies about the safety of vaccines. Ignoring a controversy like this one — jobs + vaccines + “personal liberty” — is never the right response.