Providers Encouraged to Complete Weekly Vaccination Survey

Posted on January 13, 2021 by Jonathan Lips

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) is urging long-term care settings, both nursing homes and assisted living providers, to complete a short weekly survey that will help the State track progress towards vaccinating residents and staff for COVID-19. 

The survey is voluntary, but LeadingAge Minnesota encourages members to submit this important information, and we worked with MDH to keep the survey as short and focused as possible. According to MDH, the State needs data on the percentage of residents and staff who have been vaccinated in order to direct support and information to long-term care settings where it is needed, and it does not have another way to access facility-level vaccination data.

The survey will ask you to indicate if you are a LeadingAge Minnesota member, and when you click yes it will ask if MDH may share your responses with us. We ask you to take those two steps to help us understand vaccination progress among our members and to inform any advocacy we may need to do. MDH will also share aggregate, non-facility-specific data with us based on all responses it receives.

Notably, this data will be considered public information. While MDH does not intend to release or post facility-specific information proactively, it would be required to share the information if a legislator, the media or another member of the public requested it.

Aggregate vaccination data could be utilized in several ways. It will give the State an understanding of how to allocate resources beyond the first, second, and third vaccine clinics occurring in your settings. Additionally, the data will give us a more concrete picture of the countless positive stories we have heard from so many of you about your vaccination experiences and could be used to shape positive media about the good work you’re doing. 

MDH is specifically asking providers to complete the survey every Wednesday by the close of business, covering data from the previous week. If your facility had its first vaccination clinic more than a week before you first fill out the survey, you can still enter that information. If you do not have new information to share in a given week – for example, if you are between vaccination clinics – you can quickly indicate there are no changes and stop there.

If you have questions about the survey, contact Angie Koch at Angelica.koch@state.mn.us