Communicating Findings

Communicating Findings

Communicating the findings of an HPV vaccine QI project to healthcare teams requires attention to data presentation and interpersonal context. Giving healthcare teams feedback on how they are performing throughout the QI process allows for adjustments in practice and can keep people focused on the goal.

Important considerations for communicating data to providers include:

• What format will you use to communicate, electronically or a paper-based report?
• Who will you communicate findings to, clinic or system leaders, vaccine providers, or all clinic staff?
• When will you communicate this data, in staff meetings, newsletters, or other events?

These questions should be answered in collaboration with the healthcare system or clinic leaders. Communicating findings will be important to providers and system leaders because many times incentives are tied to performance.

An effective way to communicate findings is to use a vaccination “report card”. Many healthcare systems already use different forms of score cards or report cards, so this format will be familiar to many providers.

“Again, no one wants to be a poor performer, and everyone wants to be the best, so I think we can use the scorecards to spur individual provider change in order to do some individual provider behavior modification to be like “Okay, it’s worth it for me to do this extra two-minute conversation to go ahead and grab that HPV vaccine while I have that kid here.”

Health system QI Leader

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Using the HPVIQ report card

Our report card is found in the HPVIQ.org resources. You can use this report card to provide regular feedback to clinics and providers. 

You can use IIS or EHR data to complete the report card for clinics or adapt it to report for providers.

Steps for completing the immunization report card:

• For the first section of the report card, enter the total number of patients in each age group with active registry records. Calculate coverage for all three adolescent vaccines using the CDC’s “census method” with all active records. 
• For the second section of the report card, enter the HPV vaccine QI goal. In this example report card, we suggest a 15% goal for each age group. But you can modify the text to choose a different goal. Enter the number of patients that are represented by the 15% goal.  For example, if a clinic has 800 11-12 year old patients, you will enter 120 for the number of adolescent patients that need to be vaccinated.
• At the start of the QI project, you will leave the three and six month progress boxes blank. Use the same report card at three and six months into the project to report progress toward the goal.
• At three and six month follow-up, use IIS or EHR data to show the number of patients in each age group who have received their first dose of HPV vaccine since the initial assessment. Subtract the number of patients with one dose of HPV vaccine at each follow-up period from the number of patients who had one dose of HPV vaccine at the start of the project to get your progress numbers.
• If a clinic’s three month progress report indicates that fewer than half of the target patients have not received the HPV vaccine, the clinic is not on track to meet the QI goal. Extra follow-up activities may be necessary.