Increasing influenza immunization rates among healthcare providers in an ambulatory-based, University Healthcare setting

Abstract

Objective: Despite its ‘best practice’ status as an intervention to combat healthcare-related influenza, many healthcare personnel (HCP) do not seek vaccinations themselves. The objective of this study was to achieve the Healthy People [HP] 2020′s influenza vaccination goal of 90% among our HCP. Design: The study utilized the model for improvement, consisting of Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles. Each influenza season served as a PDSA cycle until the HP 2020 vaccination goal was achieved. The quality improvement (QI) study was conducted over four influenza seasons (i.e. 2014–15; 2015–16; 2016–17 and 2017–18). Setting: The study’s setting was an ambulatory-based, university health center within a suburban university located in central New Jersey. Participants: Adapting the National Vaccine Advisory Committee’s definition of HCP, clinical and non-clinical staff members (n = 110) participated in the QI-study. Interventions: QI-interventions were centered on staff education/outreach, improved accessibility to influenza vaccines and frequent communication to staff over several PDSA cycles. Main Outcome & Results: The QI-interventions significantly increased our overall vaccination coverage on our influenza vaccination status survey from 70.2% (2011–14 influenza seasons; n = 102) to 84.9% (2014–15 influenza season; n = 93) in PDSA 1, and 91.1% (2015–16 influenza season; n = 90) in PDSA cycle 2 (χ2 = 309.53, P < 0.001). Vaccination rates remained above the 90% performance goal during our quality control/assurance measuring periods (i.e. the 2016–18 influenza seasons). Conclusions: This study demonstrates that influenza vaccination coverage can significantly improve among HCP through the application of concurrent and multifaceted QI-interventions.