Top 5 Features of Effective Vaccine Management Software

Efficient and accurate vaccine management is an important aspect of patient safety and foundational to program success. This makes vaccine management software an essential tool for enhancing the immunization process in every primary care practice. It enables healthcare professionals to increase vaccination rates and better protect their patients and communities. 

Vaccine management software can contribute significantly toward improving these rates, but selecting the best options for your practice requires careful consideration of various factors, including your specific needs, the range of features offered by different software solutions, and the seamless integration with your existing practice management systems. 

This guide will explore the key features, benefits, and importance of vaccine management software for primary care practices. We will also provide insights on how to choose the right software and implement it effectively to ensure quality patient care and operational efficiency in your medical practice.

Key Features of Vaccine Management Software

The Must-Have Features for Program Success

Vaccine management software is an indispensable tool for primary care, streamlining the entire immunization process by addressing the most important aspects of vaccine administration and inventory control.

The ideal vaccine management software should exhibit a comprehensive range of features tailored to facilitate the vaccination process effectively.

• Inventory Management: Tracking of private vaccines with support for stocks of all types (e.g. VFC, State), allowing them to be managed separately.
• Usage Forecasting: Tracks historical and ongoing usage—by season— to predict inventory needs, and eliminate missed vaccination opportunities.
• Active & Passive Safety Checks: Vaccine verification from initial order through point-of-care, ensuring compliance and safeguarding patient populations.
• EHR Integration: Integrates with Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for comprehensive, consolidated patient immunization history.
• IIS Reporting: Reports to Immunization Information Systems (IIS), safeguarding immunization information completeness.

These core features improve the process of ordering vaccines, streamline administrative duties, enhance patient safety, and elevate the standard of care for medical practices of all sizes.

Benefits of Vaccine Management Software

Achieving Better Healthcare Outcomes with Less Work

Vaccine management software offers a suite of benefits that streamline the vaccination process and secure better healthcare outcomes. These specialized systems automate and optimize crucial tasks, from inventory tracking to patient outreach, making the administration of vaccines more secure, efficient, and equitable. By productivity and service quality improvements, these tools are reshaping the landscape of patient-centric healthcare.

Greater Inventory Accuracy
Vaccine management software significantly reduces the workload associated with vaccine storage and handling. Utilizing platforms like VaxCare, in conjunction with established EHRs, helps eliminate waste and loss, reducing costs and overhead for healthcare facilities. With these systems, the vaccine ordering process is not only simplified but also optimized, leading to precise inventory control and minimal financial losses due to expired or unused vaccines.

Streamlined Workflow
By automating back-end clinical processes and supply-chain management, vaccine management software liberates healthcare workers from time-consuming administrative tasks, allowing them to dedicate more effort to patient care and enhancing overall workflow effectiveness.

Enhanced Patient Safety
Ensuring the well-being of patients is paramount in vaccine administration, and vaccine management software systems assist staff in preventing common vaccine errors before dispensing, minimizing waste and loss, and improving overall patient safety while avoiding costly billing oversights.

Improved Vaccination Rates
Effective vaccine management software is crucial in maintaining high vaccination rates. By streamlining the entire vaccination process—from secure storage and distribution to accurate tracking of doses—this technology ensures the highest standards of vaccine safety and efficacy. And by integrating with EHRs, these systems can facilitate accurate documentation, a necessary step for identifying coverage gaps and addressing vaccine hesitancy. 

By enhancing data accuracy, simplifying administrative workflows, and providing comprehensive analytics, vaccine management software is instrumental in helping healthcare providers and public health administrators increase vaccination rates and achieve healthier communities.

Choosing the Right Vaccine Management Software

The Art of Choosing

Choosing the right vaccine management software is an important decision for healthcare organizations and providers aiming to maximize patient safety, increase vaccination rates, and enhance overall quality of care. With the right software, healthcare professionals can ensure compliance with regulations, reduce workload through automation, and minimize vaccine loss while maintaining a high standard of patient care.

Considerations for Healthcare Organizations and Providers

Ordering & Managing Inventory
From the moment you place your first order, a vaccine program can be a source of lost revenue. Those losses can then continue silently, hidden in continually occurring processes. This is why you need vaccine management software that can correctly predict your inventory needs and provide end-to-end inventory tracking—that’s from the moment it’s ordered until final claims adjudication.

‘Lost’ Doses
While inventory management presents plenty of opportunities for lost doses, the real trouble begins when a vaccine reaches your office. Many vaccines have such a low profit margin that it can take up to four or more additional shots to make up for one lost dose.

With the right vaccine management software, the additional efficiencies throughout the other aspects of your practice will help to absorb any losses that are simply unavoidable.

Rates & Admin
Because insurance providers reimburse at different rates, your vaccine management software should make it easy to calculate an appropriate billing rate to cover not just your purchase price but the administration and supply costs as well. 

Without a system in place, there are too many ways for your office to lose money in the process of charting, billing, and other record-keeping.

Coding & Auditing
Vaccine management software that can identify when to bill a patient directly (as opposed to sending it through to a payer for reimbursement), and then assist in following up on the auditing process is critical to avoiding revenue “leakage.” If this process isn’t automated, even the most organized and efficient offices will still spend time following up on denials due to coding errors. 

Time
Each vaccine has billing codes to manage, each insurance company has a fee structure to maintain in your system, there are contracts and contacts to manage, records to check, inventory to track, and denial management when your claims get rejected due to any number of issues.

The right choice can help your practice gain back the precious time and energy spent simply managing your program.

VaxCare’s Dedicated Vaccine Management Solution

With VaxCare, you give the shot—we handle the rest:

• We take over your vaccine purchasing, providing unlimited inventory at no cost and automatically replenishing your stock when the supply gets low. Lost or expired doses? We’ll replace those for free.
• We automate your workflow and coding, eliminating manual tasks and reducing costly errors.
• Our platform ensures you’re paid for every qualifying dose, along with giving you the complete visibility you need to keep your vaccine program profitable.

VaxCare

VaxCare’s end-to-end solution removes the financial and operational burdens of the typical ‘buy and bill’ model. Providing practices with vaccines at no upfront cost, our automated platform drastically reduces coding and billing errors. The result is a vaccine program with greater profitability, visibility, and better patient outcomes.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

Many EHRs Offer Some Support for Vaccines

While not purpose-built for vaccines, EHRs still offer incredible value for primary care practices. They provide efficient patient data management, and quick access to comprehensive medical histories, diagnoses, and treatment plans. This accessibility improves diagnostic accuracy and treatment decisions, ultimately enhancing patient care.

The ideal option for many practices lies in integrating dedicated vaccine management software with their existing EHR—with the vaccine platform focusing on efficient vaccine inventory control, ordering, and administration, and the EHR enhancing overall patient care and promoting greater practice efficiency.

athenahealth

athenahealth EHR is a connected, tailorable EHR solution that empowers clinicians, with electronic medical records capabilities that make it easier to document patient encounters and deliver exceptional care.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

Azalea

Azalea EHR is an easily accessible platform designed to unify the clinical, financial, and operational sides of care, to create a seamless patient through greater efficiency.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

eClinicalWorks

eClinicalWorks EHR (eCW) is focused on support for independent, ambulatory practices, built to ensure every aspect of patient care is under control, with nationwide hospital interoperability through the CommonWell and Carequality networks.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

eMDs

eMDs EHR is a brand of CompuGroup Medical, designed by a team of clinicians and billers—experienced with practices large and small—to enable providers to focus their attention on patients.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

Epic

Epic EHR allows you to automatically identify and act on care gaps to keep patients up to date on preventive and chronic care—reaching out directly to get them scheduled for immunizations and routine screenings or to track their progress with ongoing tasks.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

Greenway Intergy

Greenway Intergy EHR is a cloud-based EHR and practice management solution that allows you to manage chronic conditions, capture payer incentives, and thrive in the world of value-based healthcare.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

Greenway PrimeSuite

Greenway PrimeSuite EHR is a cloud-based, clinically driven electronic health record and practice management system you can customize to align with the unique documenting, billing, and reporting needs of your practice.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

NextGen

NextGen Healthcare EHR is an integrated EHR system stocked with specialty-specific content designed to meet the clinical and operational goals every type of practice through the flexibility and configurability.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

Office Practicum

Office Practicum EHR is the first pediatric-specialty EHR to receive Drummond’s Pediatric Health IT Certification, a testament to their commitment to building technology solutions uniquely for pediatric needs. As a pediatric-specialty EHR, Office Practicum functions exclusively to support the care needs of kids.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

Veradigm

Veradigm EHR (previously Allscripts Professional EHR) is an ambulatory EHR platform that is designed to support the needs of busy provider practices. It allows you to provide more informed patient care, streamline workflows, and improve practice profitability.

Automatic Ordering	No-Cost Inventory	Patient Scheduling	Point of Care Patient Safety	Billing Management	Clinical Workflow
Insurance & Claims	End-to-End Dose Tracking	IIS	ICD-10	CPT	HL7

https://www.ehrinpractice.com/

Vaccines are a simple way to improve community health, but they’re anything but simple to manage. We know that time equals money, and in today’s office, both are in short supply. We hope this guide has helped you to identify not only the strengths in your own program, but the places where vaccine management software can have the greatest impact for you, for your staff, and for your patients. A vaccine program offers tremendous value for your patients—but it shouldn’t come at the expense of your practice’s financial health.

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/