Keeping Vaccine Safety at the Point of Care

August 6, 2024

Maintaining a safe and efficient vaccination process isn’t always as easy. Staff often face a wide variety of possible hurdles. Unexpected spikes in patient volume, numerous non-clinical tasks that modern practice environments demand, managing separate patient populations and inventory, and the constant evolution of vaccine recommendations. 

Even a disorganized vaccine storage area, especially when combined with manual patient verification, can significantly affect safe vaccine administration at the point of care.

All together, eliminating human error from day-to-day operations seems impossible—but let’s try. Because when staff get busy or distracted, the worst outcome isn’t a lost dose, but that dose ending up in the wrong arm. If this happens, the patient’s immunity could be compromised. And once that patient’s trust is lost, you may not have the opportunity to earn it back.

How your clinic documents immunizations can make all the difference to your patient’s safety. That’s why we believe the only way to be sure, is to be present.

If your office vaccinates, you’ll want to keep reading as we look at the importance of safety measures at the point of care, review the data points VaxCare analyzes to ensure the right patient gets the right dose, and the benefits of having an integrated platform available both at the fridge and in the exam room. 

Why Vaccine Safety is Important at the Point of Care

The VaxCare Hub with two VaxCare Mobile Hubs in their charging bases.While some practices may keep their stock in the exam room, most opt to store their vaccine inventory in a central area for greater accessibility. Naturally, vaccinations only occur after the dose has made the trip from the fridge to the patient. A short trip that is usually as unremarkable as it is likely to succeed.

Meanwhile, you also need to stay up-to-date with the CDC’s immunization schedule for different antigens and age groups, the ACIP’s latest recommendations for specific vaccines, as well as various health conditions and different populations. But, of course, most vaccinations are simple and uncomplicated.

But what usually happens doesn’t always happen—and mistakes are likelier among many simple tasks than those that require greater attention. It’s all too easy to get busy or distracted during that short trip—and the worst outcome isn’t a lost dose, but a dose that ends up in the wrong arm.

How your clinic documents immunizations can make all the difference to your patient’s safety. That’s why we believe the only way to be sure, is to be present.

To better safeguard your patient’s health while addressing these challenges and more, we broadened our vaccine management solution to encompass the point of care. 

Because VaxCare works wherever you are, you can be sure your patients are covered and safe during every encounter.

Ensuring the Right Patient Gets the Right Dose

VaxCare’s intelligent platform ensures the right patient gets the right dose by maintaining complete end-to-end visibility for every private dose in your practice. From shipment to delivery, and from the fridge to the patient and beyond, we make vaccine management and patient safety easy for practices of all sizes.

When doses are checked out on our custom vaccine management devices—the VaxCare Hub and Mobile Hub—we run coverage checks to ensure it’s both covered by insurance and safe to administer to the patient.

The following data points are analyzed every time a dose is scanned during the encounter:

  • Age Indication
  • Payer and Plan Coverage
  • Patient Safety Measures
  • Dose Expiration
  • Ordered Doses: If we receive order data from your EHR we’ll verify that scanned doses were ordered.

If, for example, a vaccine has been ordered for a patient outside the recommended age range to receive a dose, staff will be prompted with the information.

Screenshot from a VaxCare Hub showing a warning dialog.

However, you and your staff are the medical professionals. Rather than cancel the checkout process outright, we allow staff to select an overriding reason and proceed with the administration after they’ve dismissed the warning.

We understand that each patient is unique and that sometimes you may need to make situational decisions to provide the best care for the patient.

And there’s no need to worry that these decisions will be lost in the moment—coverage decisions made at the point of care are tracked and saved for every transaction making it easy to review as a team at any time, as well as provide your reasoning to the patient’s insurance if necessary.

Benefits of EHR Integration at the Point of Care

Your EHR is critical to the smooth and efficient operation of your practice. It is the source of truth for all patient, appointment, and order information. That is why VaxCare has made EHR integration one of our top priorities. We offer direct integration with most major EHRs and have a dedicated team that’s always working to add new integrated connections for our partners.

Because your EHR already houses the most critical information, integration is an easy choice. It ensures that we have all the information we need to help you keep your patients safe at the point of care by allowing VaxCare to seamlessly and automatically read patient data from—and write vaccination data to—your EHR, reducing work for you and your team. 

And it’s just one of the ways our platform ensures that what the physician has ordered is exactly what gets dispensed and administered, keeping patients safe and providers happy. 

EHR Integration Benefits for Staff

  • Time Savings
    By automatically populating patient records with accurate data, essential clinical tasks can be prioritized over non-clinical necessities.
  • Enhanced Accuracy
    By minimizing the potential for human error, VaxCare promotes accuracy in vaccine documentation, providing reliable information for clinical decision-making.
  • Streamlined Workflow
    By automating the charting process, healthcare staff can streamline their workflow and devote more time and attention to direct patient care.

For healthcare professionals and administrators looking to elevate their vaccine program, VaxCare’s end-to-end vaccine solution remains the industry standard. By providing practices with vaccines at no upfront cost and supplying a complete and integrated platform to manage those vaccines, VaxCare eliminates the financial and operational burdens of the typical ‘buy and bill’ model. And we bring that same intentionality to the point of care, benefiting not only the health of your practice but also your patients.

INTRODUCING VAXCARE
Your Vaccine Program, Simplified.

VaxCare makes vaccine inventory worries a thing of the past, with no-cost inventory, dose tracking, and more in a device that's as simple as a smartphone.

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References
[1] (2024, July 23). ACIP Vaccine Recommendations and Guidelines (CDC). https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/index.html

Additional Resources
For more information on vaccine management and healthcare compliance, including best practices, training opportunities, and relevant updates on immunization programs, we recommend:

World Health Organization (WHO): https://www.who.int/immunization/diseases/en/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/
Immunize.org: https://www.immunize.org/


August 6, 2024