Flu season: Present is prologue

More vaccine expected in supply, but the staggered delivery system that some doctors found irritating will become status quo.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. March 25, 2002.

Last month, when Howard Weinblatt, MD, medical director of Integrated Health Associates, sat down to crunch the numbers for last year's flu vaccination rates, they were down -- a legacy of the disastrous flu vaccine season in 2000.

In previous years the large medical group serving 170,000 patients in the Ann Arbor, Mich., area had managed to increase vaccination rates by as much as 10% annually by implementing an aggressive program of reminders for both physicians and patients. But this year, none of that happened. The vaccine arrived as needed, but patients were not notified because of uncertainty.

"We decided not to send out the postcards last year because -- how stupid would you feel sending postcards telling people to come in and then not having any vaccine," he said.

As for this year, he has placed his order, but doesn't know how much more his group will do. In the wake of 2000, his physicians were furious. This year, that anger has given way to a kind of quiet frustration. His physicians feel so burned by how recent vaccine experiences have been handled that they are not motivated to re-start efforts to get people immunized.

"They figure, why bother?" said Dr. Weinblatt. "And I am depressed and frustrated and have lost faith in the capability of our country to provide vaccine. What's happening with vaccine availability makes me feel like the last ten years of work have just been washed down the drain."

As the flu season draws to a close, physicians, public health officials, medical societies, and vaccine manufacturers are assessing what went right and what went wrong and making plans for the 2002-2003. [...]