A flu shot is a flu shot?

Flu shots are all created equal.   Meaning no matter who administers them the service is the same quality, same professionalism, same everything.    Unfortunately this is not the case.   

A flu shot seems like a simple service to deliver.   A nurse comes to a location, lines up participants and administers flu shots.  How hard can it be?   The facts are that all nurses are not as skilled in giving flu shots, organized and professional.

What surprises me often when some companies contact us about flu shot pricing is that they ask very little about quality.  They just want to know the price per flu shot.  They would gladly somehow think they are saving $1 on a $20 flu shot than even worry about the quality being less. 

Corporate Health Fairs and On site Health Screenings

Corporate health fairs, health screenings on site are most successful when part of comprehensive health promotion strategy.

Effective worksite health promotion programs begin with benchmarking and incorporate an evaluation system that measures process and outcome variables. Additional program elements include.

Common Program Elements:

1. Health Education
2. Supportive Environments
3. Integration
4. Linkage
5. Health Screening

Flu Vaccine 2008-09 3 New Strains

The upcoming flu season's flu vaccine contains three new strains not found in prior years. One of the three strains is currently in the southern hemisphere flu vaccine.

All three strains have not been replaced in any single year for approximately 20 years. This will affect the manufacturing and delivery of flu vaccine to provide flu shots in the U.S. The supply should meet the demand, but the delivery of the flu vaccine will be more spread out and later than in the previous two seasons.

Corporations planning to offer on site flu vaccinations should plan ahead and order flu shots and vaccinations as early as possible. Flu vaccine is ordered early to assure better delivery time frames for our clients.

Health Fairs of America/Vaccination Services of America orders vaccine well in advance to help insure timely delivery to our clients while also securing the best pricing. In addition, Health Fairs of America has a preferred priority relationship with the major suppliers to assure flu vaccine supply.

Flu Shots - Who should get them? Do we have a good flu shot strategy?

The strategy of the CDC for many years on flu vaccinations/flu shots has been to recommend vaccinations for elderly and high-risk groups. Yes, these groups are most likely to have serious health consequences if they contract the flu. Unfortunately this strategy has resulted in several problems. Quite often the carriers of the influenza virus are children and healthy people. So vaccinating young and healthy as well as the at-risk and elderly should be at least of equal importance. If you are going to reduce the spread of influenza to those most at-risk, you need to have a strategy that properly addresses all groups.

This strategy along with the many years of uncertain delays have quenched the need for flu shots nationwide. For years, the CDC focused on encouraging those over 50 years and at-risk to get their flu shot sometime after October 1st each year. It is going to take years to re-educate the U.S. population that flu shots are the way to prevent the spread of influenza among all groups. They also need to educate the population better on the myths about receiving a flu shot.

Flu shots are readily available in the community, company, workplace, church, grocery store, pharmacy and many other venues. It is almost impossible to avoid an opportunity to get a flu shot. Believe it or not, only about 25% of the population actually receives a flu shot annually even though it is little or no cost.

Flu Shots Nationwide: Schedule Flu Shots Now!

Subject: Time is running out and so are available vaccination dates

I have good news and bad news. The good news is a record number of corporations have scheduled their fall employee flu vaccination event. The bad news is we’re running out of available dates. Oct. 30th is the last day we’ll be able to take reservations and by then choices will be extremely limited! Click here and schedule your corporate event now while there’s a choice of available dates.

Alan Kohll, President
Vaccination Services of America
Health Fairs of America
www.vsamerica.com
Flu Shots Nationwide
Health Fairs Nationwide
Corporate Health
Health Benefit Strategy Consulting
888-434-4358

Are Health Risk Appraisals Reliable?

Many of our clients and companies throughout the U.S. utilize and Health Risk Appraisal questionnaires to gather information on their employee population to gauge their employee health and wellness. The problem with these questionnaire is that they are subjective. If you ask an employee how many servings of fruits and vegetables they consume daily, they typically over-estimate this information. The value of these HRA is limited because of the subjectivity since they are self-reported rather than completed with the coaching of health educator or nurse.

Another problem centers around the lack of usage. Many companies offer an online and/or paper questionnaires, but voluntary participation is not significant enough for an accurate cross section of the population. The Health Risk Appraisal is designed to give each employee a picture of their current health status by a ranking scale. On a individual basis, this provides some qualtiy feedback on their health and makes some good recommendations for the individual. Again, this information is biased, but can provide some valuable health information that can promote behavior change.

The larger the cross section of employees that complete the HRA along with evaluating other information such as claim history and utilization reports helps to conceptualize the wellness status of an employee population taking into account some potential bias.


Alan Kohll
Vaccination Services of America
Health Faris of America
888-434-4358 x 102
http://www.vsamerica.com/
http://www.healthfairsamerica.com/
Corporate Health
Flu Shots
Flu Vaccinations
Health Fairs
Corporate Health
Nationwide Onsite Flu Shots

Corporate Health and ROI

A lot of companies are interested in corporate health, but don't know where to start.

To really impact behavior change in the right direction takes a total commitment to health and wellness. 85% of the health care costs come from 15% of the employees. Over 70% of health care costs stem directly from lifestyle choices by the employees.

Each company needs to examine its workforce in a number of different ways to impact change in the right direction. This involves working with the employees to determine what will impact a behavior change, what incentives are needed, what benefits are most important and how all this works together to improve both the company's performance and the employees health and productivity.

Health Fairs of America work with companies to determine what services they really needs to implement and corporate health and health benefit strategy. The typical company initially measures employees current health status using a health risk appraisal (HRA) questionnaire. This HRA assesses the current health status of each and every employee along with providing a detailed aggregate management report. Keep in mind that the employees are self reporting so the data is somewhat subjective.

In addition to the HRA, most companies sponsor on site health screenings which typically including cholesterol screenings, glucose, blood pressure, body-fat or height/weight/BMI measurements. Including the screening results with the HRA provides a better picture of each employees current health status.

Alan Kohll
President and CEO
Health Fairs of America (tm)
Vaccination Services of America, Inc.
888-434-4FLU (4358)
info@vsamerica.com
Corporate Health
Flu Shots
Health Fairs
Health Screenings
Corporate Flu shots

Corporate Health and Health Benefit Strategy

Is your company looking to develop a long-term corporate health and benefits strategy?

Don't just throw darts at the wall and hope! A health and benefits strategy involves a genuine business strategy just like any other business planning. Corporate health and wellness programs are just part of the overall health and wellness strategy. The benefits and resources available need to be aligned properly to help promote return on investment (ROI).

Being in the industry for over 10 years, I often gets inquiries from clients wanting to do a health screening events and/or some kind of corporate health event. I ask them "what is the objective of this event?" They usually answer with a non-specific objective. They want to promote healthy lifestyles and behaviors, but have no idea where to start. They think health screenings and flu shot are a place to start. That may be a good place to start, but how are you going to get the least healthy to participate without proper planning, promotion, health strategy and other factors that will get the maximum potential of a health screening program. Obviously, Health Fairs of America benefits by getting higher participation. The objective is to get the least healthy employees to particpate and impact changing their behavior. We may not get a behavior change because of the screening, but it one positive step as part of an overall health strategy put together by our company in cooperation with the client.

Alan Kohll
President
Health Fairs of America
http://www.healthfairsamerica.com/
888-434-4358 x 102
http://www.vsamerica.com/

Nationwide Corporate Health
Flu Vaccinations
Flu Shots
Health Fairs

Flu Shots and Flu Vaccinations Nationwide Onsite Quality

Vaccination Services of America (VSA) and Health Fairs of America specializes in providing nationwide on-site corproate flu shots, health screenings, health fairs, corporate health and strategic health benefit design across the U.S. with a highly trained and specialized nursing network of 1,000 nurses.

There are many companies that offer nationwide services, but quite commonly subcontract a large percentage of services to outside companies rather than provide that service directly. These companies rely on these third party vendors to deliver a quality professional service. What often happens is a "poor inconsistent level of service and lack of professionalism."

There are other nationwide providers that rely on a vast pool of temporary nurses to implement corporate flu shot programs. The result is an inconsistent deliver of professional flu shot administration because of varying degrees of competency and professionalism by the assigned nurses. In addition, these companies are organizing a large number of retail type events potentially diluting the ability to organize these events. Lastly, these providers have non-medical professionals managing their staff and programs that lack any medical training and credentials.

Vaccination Services of America
Health Fairs of America
http://www.vsamerica.com/
http://www.healthfairsamerica.com/
888-434-4FLU

How to Select a Flu shot Vendor

How do you Select a good flu shot provider for my company?

They are many options when selecting a flu shot provider to vaccinate your employees. You can call a local health provider and see if they offer the service locally. You can search the internet. You can contact other companies in the area.

Once you find some providers, how do you tell them apart? Sure the first question is always about the price $ per flu shot. Most companies purchase the vaccine at about the same price which makes flu shot a commodity service. What sets the provider apart like any health care service is the quality and professionalism of the clinical nursing staff and administrative support.
Too many companies search around for the lowest price assuming that the service is about the same when the opposite is the case. Would you go with the lowest price when searching for a physician? Probably not. You would look for a physician with a good reputation along with a reasonable fee.

You need to ask these type of questions:

(1) Does the company use have their own network of nurses or do they subcontract to temporary nursing agencies?
(2) How long has the company been in business. There are lot of companies in the industry that have come and gone over the years. Some have been recreated under a new company because of business failure so watch out.
(3) What type of pre-event organization assistance do they offer?
(4) Do they offer online appointments? If they do offer this service is this an outsourced service? If this is an outsourced service, what type of security does the service offer to protect privacy of information? Does the site have the capacity to handle a large employee population using the site? Does the application have adequate server backup capacity? These are just some of the questions that need to be answered.

Alan Kohll
President
Vaccination Services of America
Health Fairs of America
www.vsamerica.com
www.healthfairsamerica.com
888-434-4358