Exceeding the Healthy People 2000 goal for influenza vaccination through a collaborative effort at eight primary care...

The use of trivalent influenza vaccination has been shown to reduce hospitalizations and mortality in high risk persons receiving the vaccine prior to endemic periods. Despite the generally accepted benefit of this vaccine, its use remains relatively low, with less than 40% of high risk persons actually receiving the vaccination. Increasing the vaccination rate is particularly difficult for physicians in small groups, practicing without sophisticated information systems, and for those practices in which small percentages of the patients are in HMO's or capitated plans. The setting for our study was eight primary care clinics, in a predominantly fee for service environment. We used several interventions to achieve the Healthy People 2000 goal of vaccinating 60% of the high risk of population. Those interventions included: mailings to patients recommending they get vaccinated, empowering non physician clinic personnel to administer vaccines without specific physician orders, and distributing comparative data of the vaccination rates at all participating clinic sites. We found that by using these interventions at eight different primary care clinic sites, we were able to achieve an influenza vaccination rate of 66.4% for our high risk population. We concluded that through collaboration eight primary care clinics can exceed the Healthy people 2000 goal of 60% compliance with influenza vaccination.