Influenza: A Collaborative Approach to Screening and Vaccinating Hospitalized Patients

Purpose:
The overall goal of this influenza project was to improve compliance with inpatient influenza screening and vaccination. Nursing Quality collaborated with Pharmacy, Nursing, Nursing Informatics, Information Technology and Hospital Quality to drive this quality initiative.

Relevance/Significance:
Collaboration and communication are critical to enhance patient safety and improve quality outcomes. This project (Influenza: A Collaborative Approach to Screening and Vaccination of Hospitalized Patients) is in alignment with the 2016 Conference goal of Connecting Quality, Safety and Staffing to Improve Outcomes. All quality initiatives must be evidence based and engagement of unit managers and bedside nurses is crucial to improving compliance and outcomes.

Strategy and Implementation:
Initially, compliance with influenza vaccination was not where our organization wanted to be, nor was it where we needed to be in relation to Value Based Purchasing (VBP). Over the last several years, the medical center created a vaccination protocol that authorized nurses to be responsible for screening and administration of the flu vaccine. Additional strategies included simplification of the vaccination screening process in our electronic health record, creating of a Best Practice Advisory (BPA) that provides decision support to the RN performing the vaccination screening, education of the nursing staff about the importance of timely vaccination, the creation of a "real time" dashboard report, and a retrospective compliance report which was emailed to nursing leaders every other week.

Evaluation:
During the 2014-2015 influenza season, our compliance with influenza screening and vaccination increased from 74.27% to 97.28%. The success of this initiative is a collection of the efforts and commitment from bedside nurses, nursing leaders and the many different supporting departments who collaborated on this initiative.

Implications for Practice:
As payment structures have changed and the focus is on pay for performance, it is crucial that organizations work together to improve processes. Improved processes allow the bedside nurse to provide timely, efficient, evidenced based nursing care which will enhance patient outcomes.