Deschutes County Health Services’ Immunization Data Entry Improvement Project

Deschutes County Health Services’ (DCHS's) immunization data entry did not meet the necessary State of Oregon Immunization Program benchmark of 80% of all immunization data being entered into the State immunization database within 14 days of administration. With the following aim: 95% of all immunization administration data from all Deschutes County Public Health clinics to be entered into the state database within 14 days of administration while maintaining data accuracy, DCHS completed a Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) improvement initiative. The following quality improvement (QI) tools were utilized: workflow mapping, root cause analysis, and brainstorming. Through the use of these tools, the work group determined that the data entry delay could be attributed to errors in paperwork completion, an irregular courier schedule among eight outlying clinics, and insufficient staff for data entry completion.

At the first data collection, DCHS observed, on average across all clinics, a 31% increase in data entry timeliness as compared to the same month of the previous year. Given those results, it was determined that the interventions resulted in improvement at the majority of DCHS public health clinics. While the aim was not initially met, given that the test period was only 1 month, it was anticipated that additional improvements would reflect at least 50% average improvement across all clinics.