MedPageToday Just asking ED patients whether they wanted a flu shot doubled uptake.
A few simple interventions boosted flu vaccine uptake for patients waiting at the emergency department [ED], according to the cluster-randomized, controlled PROFLUVAXED trial.
People in ED waiting areas who consented to view a 3-minute video with a scripted message, read a one-page flyer, and have a short discussion with an ED clinician about the flu vaccine had a 30-day follow-up vaccination rate of 41% versus 15% among patients that received no messaging about the vaccine.
Even just asking people in the ED “Would you accept the influenza vaccine in the emergency department today if your doctor asked you to get it?” resulted in a 30-day vaccination rate of 32%, Robert Rodriguez, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues reported in NEJM Evidence
“We fully expected the interventions to improve vaccine uptake but were surprised by how effective they were,” Rodriguez told MedPage Today. “The simple question intervention doubled vaccine uptake and the messaging intervention nearly tripled vaccine uptake.”
“There is a distinctly underserved population whose primary (and often only) healthcare access occurs in emergency departments,” Rodriquez noted. “To decrease disparities, public health interventions, especially vaccine messaging and vaccine administration, can and should be delivered in emergency departments.”
To ensure the messages in the video and flyer reached medically underserved populations, researchers created five different versions with the same wording that featured African American, Latinx (English and Spanish versions), multiracial, or white physicians.