Launching a community-wide flu vaccination plan.

ost offices are well aware of the hassles involved in administering flu vaccines. By November, the phone lines become jammed with patients asking, “When will it be available?” “How much will it cost?” “Do I need an appointment?” and “Can my sister get one even if she’s not a patient of yours?” Meeting this demand ties up resources and makes it hard to get regular business done. The vaccine shortage we experienced during the 2004-2005 flu season brought to light other challenges in our system. When a grocery store pharmacy received its vaccine shipment, it would hang a sign in the window and begin offering vaccine to the public. Though the intention was good, it was done without any regard to the effect on other sites that had no vaccine yet. As a result, elderly patients with diabetes waited weeks for their flu shots, while their healthy young neighbors across the street got theirs simply by going to the grocery store. We have encouraged people to get flu shots for decades now, and the one thing that finally drove up demand was to tell them they couldn’t have one. The “run on the bank” mentality that resulted exposed a lack of community-wide organization that made everyone look bad. It seemed irresponsible for a community to have multiple groups of providers administering flu shots in isolation just because they happened to have received their vaccine shipments. There had to be a better way, and it would require that the community as a whole take responsibility for vaccinating its citizens. In 2006, our community