Avoiding Missed Opportunities: Immunizing Adolescents in Green Lake County

Summary

Impact Statement: 
A local health department in rural Wisconsin was missing opportunities to immunize a significant number of teenagers who would potentially benefit from mandated or optional vaccines. They implemented an improvement project to standardize the process and educate staff in order to decrease missed immunization opportunities and thus improve vaccination coverage among adolescents.
Summary: 
The Green Lake County Department of Health and Human Services conducted an audit using the Wisconsin Immunization Registry (WIR) program to determine immunization compliance levels. As the team reviewed the compliance data, the audit also indicated that the Green Lake County Department of Health and Human Services was missing opportunities to immunize a significant number of clients who would potentially benefit from mandated or optional vaccines. As the team examined this report at a staff meeting, staff realized that they need to consider the reasons for these statistics and possible changes the team could implement to improve the numbers. The team determined that it wanted to conduct a quality improvement (QI) project to answer some key questions, such as these: • Are parents properly educated so they understand the need for the vaccine and any side effects of the vaccine? • Do all staff members provide the same level of education? • What happens if one parent approves of a vaccine at the visit and the other parent does not? • How significant is the Amish population? • What can the team do to provide better service to clients? • How is the team recording declinations, so staff know that a vaccine was actually declined by the parent and not an opportunity that staff missed? Following QI guidelines would force staff to examine baseline information, help staff focus on the root causes, assist staff to better determine needs, and propel staff to design and implement desired changes.
Organization that conducted the QI initiative: 
Green Lake County Department of Health and Human Services
Citation: 

Munsey, K. Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange. Avoiding Missed Opportunities: Immunizing Adolescents in Green Lake County. Mon, 05/18/2015 - 09:05. Available at https://www.phqix.org/content/avoiding-missed-opportunities-immunizing-adolescents-green-lake-county. Accessed November 11, 2024.

Submission Status: 
Completed
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Comments

Submitted by egbersr on

Decreased HPV missed opportunities from 59% down to 13% is impressive. I would be interested to see the declination form used and if this is what made the difference.

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Submitted by egbersr on

oops sorry meant vaccine not HPV although that is included.

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kschneider@co.green-lake.wi.us's picture
Submitted by kschneider@co.g... on

Nice work Green Lake County Health Department!

 

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