Practical toolkit for managing the flu vaccine 2019

Flu season is creeping up fast across Australia, and as influenza activity continues to rise and medical practices starting to feel the pinch of immunisation management, we uncover a range of practical resources, kits and guides to help.

According to the Department of Health, 2017 saw the highest influenza activity in Australia in almost a decade, mirroring a global trend, with more than 250,000 Australians testing positive for influenza and double the normal hospitalisations.

Last year, in NSW alone, there was an unprecedented demand for the influenza vaccine, with NSW Health revealing it distributed a quarter of a million doses of state and national program influenza vaccines – that’s three-quarters of a million more than the previous year.

To help understand how to manage the flu vaccine within your practice, the following resources can help.

Healthshare Flu Factsheets

Healthshare offers over 1200 factsheets, including a wide range of flu and immunisation resources. You can easily search, download, print or email these factsheets and share them with patients. They’re a fast, easy way to help patients and the wider community, manage and understand their condition.

Some examples of flu-related factsheets include:

Healthshare factsheets are a FREE tool available to MedicalDirector customers, which can be easily installed in the sidebar of your software.

HotDoc’s new Flu Clinic Kit

Patient engagement management platform HotDoc has released a free practical Flu Clinic Kit to help make it as easy as possible to boost flu clinic bookings, while ensuring things run without a hitch.

Each kit includes waiting room posters and Facebook posts to help you drive bookings, a checklist of everything you need to consider prior to running your flu clinic, and a step-by-step guide that shows you how to easily create a ‘flu clinic practitioner’ in HotDoc.

HotDoc also offers a free webinar on the 2019 Flu Vaccine Update, providing your practice team, including nurses, GPs, practice managers and reception staff with an overview of relevant information related to the different strains, billing considerations with Medicare vs private billing, and how to ensure your practice is equipped with enough resources to prepare for flu season. The session runs for one hour and equates to 1 CPD point.

HotDoc is a MedicalDirector partner and is compatible with both Pracsoft and Helix.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners offers a range of resources, guides and webinars to help industry professionals understand influenza and manage influenza pandemics in general practice.

Managing influenza pandemics in general practice Guide 3.1
Managing influenza pandemics in general practice Guide 3.6
Flu vaccination update webinar
Guidelines for preventive activities in general practice

Government guidelines and factsheets

States and territories each have their own resources, guidelines and factsheets on influenza immunisation, treatment and management. We’ve compiled a few to help get you started:

New South Wales

Western Australia

Queensland

Victoria