Electronic Health Record (EHR) Workflow-Integrated Messaging Assists Enhance the Adult Vaccination Rate

Routinely suggested vaccinations for influenza (flu), pneumococcal, tetanus, and shingles in the United States are cost-effective treatments that can be utilized to stop high-incidence conditions that extremely affect older adults. In ambulatory care and community settings, the immunizations are widely available, and are covered by health insurance plans, involving Medicare and Medicaid. Instead of this, vaccination rates among the older adults are substantially lower in contrast to the targets set by the Healthy People 2020 initiative, a program developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to acquire a number of national health related goals involving increasing immunization rates and decreasing preventable infectious diseases. CDC taskforce suggestions for dealing this issue have identified various significant focus areas, involving provider or system based interventions.

By utilizing the Practice Fusion Electronic Health Record (EHR) platform as an instance, the white paper gives a case study of how information systems can effectively and economically impact adult vaccination rates via workflow-integrated messaging and reminders in an electronic health records (EHRs) system. The white paper explains a case study mentioning the information systems’ use to give point-of-care recommendations and reminders embedded in the clinical workflow.
In accordance to the recommendations of CDC and Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF), an influenza and pneumococcal vaccination alert program for older sufferers was executed on the Practice Fusion EHR platform to help providers in making better vaccination coverage. The program’s goal, sponsored by Pfizer, was to help in increasing immunization rates and decreasing preventable influenza and pneumococcal infections among older adults, and measure those results.
Both flu and pneumococcal vaccination rose significantly with the introduction of program.
The program helped achieve in a 113 percent increase in pneumococcal vaccine administration among unvaccinated older sufferers during a 5-month period and a 33 percent increase in influenza vaccine administration over the last year’s rate. The increase in the vaccination rates among eligible older patients shows how electronic health records sustain to move beyond a simple proxy for paper records and can surface clinically relevant data to physicians and hence assists physicians to offer better preventative care for patients.