The Impact of Emergency Department Based Influenza Vaccination

Objective: To quantify the proportion of the Wright-Patterson (WPAFB) Air Force Base Emergency Department (ED) patients presenting during a four month segment of the 2014-2015 influenza season who were eligible for influenza vaccination and model the impact of vaccinating them. Methods: A random sample of 200 out of 5,624 ED patients who presented to the WPAFB ED between October 1st, 2014, and January 31st, 2015 was studied. Both ED charts and immunization records were reviewed to determine eligibility for influenza vaccine during the ED visit. Area under the curve (AUC) analysis was used to determine vaccine velocity (VV), which was used to model vaccine impact by calculating additional preventable cases of influenza. Results: The sample included four patients meeting exclusion criteria, 75 patients ineligible for vaccination, and 121 eligible for vaccination. A comparison of VV in both groups showed that vaccination of all those eligible would increase overall vaccine impact more than 350%. Modeling this to the total study population predicts an extra 51 cases of preventable influenza. Conclusions: Offering influenza vaccination to eligible ED patients could boost vaccine deployment and prevent influenza infections, and should be offered