Autumn, again
Every autumn your service vaccinates staff at dozens of employer sites. Each employer wants sessions at their locations, some at night for shift workers. Each HR contact sends a spreadsheet of names or asks you to handle bookings. Paper consent forms are printed, filled in at the session, and carried back to the office. Vaccine stock is ordered early and allocated to sessions from a whiteboard.
Then sessions get moved, sites add people on the day, and at the end someone has to count how many were vaccinated at each site to invoice the employer and reconcile the stock.
Why flu season overwhelms the office
The work itself is simple and repeated, but it happens at a scale and speed that the rest of the year does not prepare you for. And each employer handles their side differently.
- Every session is booked through a different employer contact and method.
- Consent and pre-screening questions are on paper, completed in a queue.
- Walk-ins make the booked numbers unreliable for stock planning.
- Session changes are emailed, and the nurse sometimes has the old time.
- Counts for invoicing are made from paper forms after the event.
What that costs across a season
The season also squeezes the rest of the service. Administrators who would normally be booking referral appointments and chasing reports are tied up with flu session lists, so turnaround on the contracts that run all year slips at exactly the time employers notice it.
Office staff spend weeks on bookings. Nurses spend session time on forms rather than vaccinating. Vaccine is left over at one site and short at another. Invoices go out late because counts are waiting on paper, and records for each employer are hard to produce if they are asked for later.
| Part of the campaign | Paper and email | Campaign system |
|---|---|---|
| Booking | Spreadsheets per employer | Self-booking link per site session |
| Pre-screening and consent | Paper at the session | Online beforehand, reviewed by the nurse |
| Stock | Whiteboard estimates | Allocated by bookings, adjusted by actuals |
| Session changes | Email to the nurse | Updated in one place, attendees told |
| Invoicing | Count paper forms | Totals per employer and site from the record |
How we build the campaign system
- You set up sessions per employer and site, with times, capacity, nurse and vaccine allocation.
- Each employer's staff receive a booking link for their site's sessions, which shows only slots with space.
- When booking, staff complete the pre-screening questions and consent form your clinicians have written, so answers arrive before the session.
- Answers that your clinicians' rules say need attention are flagged for the nurse to discuss at the session. The nurse makes the decision.
- At the session the nurse works from a tablet list, records the vaccination, batch and site, and adds walk-ins.
- Stock is allocated to sessions from bookings, and actual use is recorded against each batch, so reconciliation is a report rather than a count.
- At the end of each session, the totals per employer feed invoicing and the records your service keeps.
Clinical content, including screening questions and what follows from each answer, is written and owned by your clinicians. We build the forms and records around it.
A calmer autumn
Employers get a link to send to their staff instead of a spreadsheet to fill in. Nurses arrive with a list and pre-screening answers already read. Stock follows bookings. And the numbers for invoicing and records are there when the last session ends, not weeks later.
The next year is easier again, because the employers, sites and session patterns are already set up.
Is your flu campaign run like this?
- Every employer books sessions a different way.
- Consent forms are completed on paper in the queue.
- Stock is allocated from estimates and reconciled by hand.
- Invoices wait until paper forms are counted.
- Nurses have found out about session changes on the day.