What separates average vaccine programs from high-performing ones? To find out, VaxCare conducted a comprehensive evaluation of 10 health systems, measuring their vaccine programs against industry benchmarks. Each assessment involved a comprehensive analysis across four domains: patient access, patient safety, workflow efficiencies, and financial outcomes.
This meta-analysis highlights the most common challenges that undermine performance and outlines practical opportunities to elevate vaccination programs to best-in-class performance.
Who is VaxCare? How Did This Study Originate?
VaxCare is the largest primary care vaccination network in the United States and ranks among the top five vaccine purchasers nationwide. For more than 15 years, VaxCare has been at the forefront of designing, implementing, and innovating integrated solutions to simplify the operational, financial, and logistical complexities of vaccination programs across large healthcare networks.
This study explores the operational hurdles health systems face in managing their vaccine programs, the economic toll of inefficiencies, and their impacts on patient care. In most cases, health systems are not held back by a lack of dedication but by outdated workflows, manual processes, and fragmented system integration. These inefficiencies result in missed vaccination opportunities, unnecessary financial burdens, and diminished patient satisfaction.
Despite a strong desire to improve, three key realities often hinder progress:
- Low Priority: Vaccines rank low on the list of organizational priorities.
- Hidden Inefficiencies: The true cost of an inefficient vaccine program is often buried within the broader balance sheet.
- Competing Resources: The expertise and investment needed for improvement are tied up in other initiatives.
As a result, health systems have increasingly turned to VaxCare for a turnkey solution that enhances efficiency, standardizes processes at scale, and mitigates financial risk. To evaluate whether a partnership is the right fit, VaxCare coordinates with the system to perform a comprehensive assessment of their current program. This provides executive leadership with a clear understanding of their current vaccination program and identifies actionable opportunities for improvement.
Understanding the Partnership
VaxCare’s Assessment Process
From Discovery to Assessment
Every enterprise partnership begins with a formal discovery process focused on four critical vaccine program elements: patient access, patient safety, workflow efficiencies, and financials.
The result? VaxCare is able to provide actionable insights tailored to each system’s unique goals and based on a synthesis of key stakeholder interviews, on-site visits, and a comprehensive analysis of all immunization data.
Challenges Facing Health Systems
Key Insights Uncovered
VaxCare’s 10 most recent discovery exercises highlight the recurring challenges and opportunities of vaccine programs across the industry and how they can be transformed.
Patient Access & Experience
Limited Access for Older Patients: Health systems face difficulty providing Medicare Part D-covered products to their 65+ patient population. Essential vaccines like Shingrix and Tdap are often unavailable, leading these patients to visit pharmacies or competitors. This is both inconvenient for the patient and a missed financial opportunity for the system.
Inconsistent Stock Availability: Despite managing vaccine availability at an aggregate level, individual clinic locations frequently experience inventory availability issues, contributing to missed immunizations and diminished patient satisfaction.
Outcomes & Safety
Safety Gaps at Point-of-Care: According to the ISMP’s National Vaccine Errors Reporting Program, ambulatory vaccine errors are the most common mistake across practice types. Despite the presence of technology like Epic Lot Manager and traditional barcode scanners, safety checks at the point of care are often absent or inconsistent. This exposes the system and staff to liability and undermines patient safety and compliance.
Clinical & Non-Clinical Workflows
Workflow Inefficiencies: Many health systems lack standardized, integrated workflows for non-clinical tasks, resulting in inefficient processes that waste time and introduce variability. The reliance on manual work not only increases operational burdens but also creates opportunities for loss.
Economic Results
Inventory Losses & Manual Handling Costs: Vaccine management tools are not consistently leveraged. On average, we find health systems often experience inventory losses between 8-15%. High costs associated with sourcing newer products, such as pediatric RSV and COVID-19, continue to strain budgets and erode profit.
Economic Realities
Vaccine Profitability and Capital Investment
Despite their strong negotiating leverage, most health systems face hidden challenges that erode the already slim profit margins on vaccines. As economic pressures intensify, the cost of tying up capital in inventory is increasingly difficult to justify without the visibility needed to accurately analyze program performance.
Performing such an in-depth analysis on a regular basis is almost impossible without a comprehensive tracking system that follows each dose from purchase through to reimbursement. Without this end-to-end visibility, health systems are left in the dark about their actual profit reality.
Apparent Profitability
Many Systems Appear to Enjoy a Healthy Vaccine Margin
Health systems leverage their expertise in procurement and their significant scale to secure competitive supplier pricing.
Additionally, their proficiency in negotiating payer contracts ensures favorable and sustainable reimbursement rates. At first glance, these factors suggest a promising vaccine margin.
Actual Profitability
Management and Payment Issues Decimate Vaccine Margins
For overall profitability, it’s essential to look beyond the balance sheet at hidden factors such as unbilled, uncollected, or lost doses, collection costs, and the full supply costs associated with vaccinations, including overordering.
For many health systems, detailed analysis reveals that their implied vaccine margins are often reduced by nearly half.
Vaccine Capital
Financial Weight and Risk
Health systems face significant financial challenges in maintaining vaccine inventory, with annual purchases and typical on-hand values leading to reduced financial flexibility and risks of spoilage. These factors create an unnecessary burden, forcing health systems to carefully balance the need for vaccine availability against the opportunity costs and risks of maintaining high inventory levels.
| Capital Investment in Vaccines | Health System Range |
| Annual Vaccine Purchases | $20M-40M |
| Inventory Days On Hand | 90-120 Days |
| Inventory Value On Hand | $6M-10M |
| Modeled Cost of Capital | 5.25% |
| Cost of Capital per Inventory Cycle | $300K-600K (4x/Year) |
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Scalability and Long-Term Value
Supporting the System’s Strategic Vision
As health systems look to scale strategically, leadership is faced with the challenge of expanding access while maintaining consistent clinical standards and reducing operational expenditures.
Health systems are increasingly recognizing the value of partnering with VaxCare to overhaul their vaccine programs and address these deep-rooted issues with scalable solutions that enhance patient care, operational efficiency, and financial sustainability.
Scalable Solutions for Broader Network Integration
VaxCare offers an integrated platform that reduces variability and ensures a consistent level of quality care across the entire health system. This reduction in manual effort directly leads to improved job satisfaction and lower administrative burden. This consistency is crucial for CEOs and COOs looking to expand services across locations without an increase in operational complexity.
Value-Based Care and Competitive Positioning
By focusing on patient adherence and ensuring access to all vaccines, health systems are positioned to lead in value-based care initiatives. This competitive edge supports contracts and incentives tied to population health in addition to attracting more patients. Two of VaxCare’s automatic adherence programs (Vax-to-School and Adult Flu Outreach) have demonstrated immunization rate improvements of up to 20% at no additional cost.
A focus on preventive care aligns well with value-based care initiatives, enabling systems to meet payer expectations and improve population health metrics.
Improved Safety at the Point-of-Care
By automating safety protocols at the point of care, VaxCare’s platform helps catch errors before they’re realized. With end-to-end dose-level tracking, VaxCare is uniquely positioned to bring these insights to light. Recent internal data shows that, in addition to alerting users to common issues related to vaccine orders, platform safeguards identified and prevented vaccine administration errors in approximately 0.5% of all recorded administrations.
This validates VaxCare’s role in significantly mitigating risk and ensuring compliance while aligning with the health system’s goals of delivering safe, high-quality care, reducing liability, and adhering to regulatory standards.
Financial Sustainability and Capital Redeployment
VaxCare’s business model eliminates the need to pre-purchase and hold onto expensive vaccine inventory. This frees up significant funds that can be redirected toward strategic priorities such as hiring additional staff, modernizing locations, expanding high-value service lines, or strengthening financial resilience. With VaxCare, the choice is yours.
Looking Ahead
A Strategic Partner for a Healthier Future
Health systems have the scale and resources to approach vaccine management in ways smaller practices simply can’t. But operating at scale with so many priorities competing for attention, it isn’t always clear which path will generate the greatest impact.
Wait and See
Doing nothing is always an option. However, financial and operational performance are unlikely to improve as the market realigns to become more consumer-focused.
Invest to Perform
Meaningful investments can improve vaccination services and bring DIY conveniences in-house, but new benefits also represent new expenses and potential complications.
Partner to Transform
Select a capable partner to address the additional risk and streamline work, while insourcing focus and scale to deliver an integrated and scalable solution.
By partnering with VaxCare, health systems can transform their vaccine programs into scalable, efficient, and profit-generating solutions.
For health system executives, the value proposition is clear: VaxCare offers a pathway to enhance operational efficiency, improve financial sustainability, and position the health system as a leader in preventive care while easing the burden on frontline staff. VaxCare’s partnership provides not just a service but a strategic advantage that empowers health systems to thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape.
By choosing VaxCare, health systems are advancing the state of healthcare and creating a future one that values preventive care, operational efficiency, and financial strength as foundational elements of patient-centered success.
Schedule an assessment of your vaccine program today to identify the approach that best positions your organization for long-term success.
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