How Immunization Information Systems Can Help Pediatricians and Family Physicians: Using IIS to Save Your Office Practice Time and Money

Immunization information systems can offer many benefits to pediatricians and family physicians.  As a health care provider, you are in charge of making certain that all your patients receive quality care. With the ever growing complexity of the recommended immunization schedule it has become increasingly difficult to determine which vaccines are required for your patients at each visit. Participating in your state's IIS will facilitate disease prevention by providing you with accurate and timely immunization records for each of your patients. In addition, using an IIS will help your practice be more efficient by streamlining the immunization administration process, saving your staff time and office practice money.

Immunization Information Systems can:

Track Administered Vaccines to Ensure Proper Reimbursement - Research shows that practices often do not request sufficient reimbursement for all the vaccines that they administer to their patients because they don't have an easy way of keeping track of them. IIS can help you keep track of all administered vaccines and expedite reimbursement procedures, thereby assuring you receive accurate reimbursement from health plans and state agencies.

Reduce Over-Vaccination of New Patients- Parents often lose or forget to bring in their children's immunization records, making it difficult for your office staff to determine which vaccines the children have already received. Without official documentation, physicians are required to vaccinate the child again to assure they are protected against disease. Using an IIS will allow you to access the immunization information from your patient's previous providers and will combine this information into a single record. Automatically Calculate Immunizations Needed - IIS can instantly calculate which vaccines need to be given to your patient in accordance with the latest ACIP vaccine recommendations and intervals.

Easily Send out Reminders and Recalls to Your Patients- IIS can automatically generate reminder and recall postcards and/or mailing labels to send out to parents to remind them when their child's immunizations are due or have been missed.  Many IIS can also generate automated phone calls.

Save Your Staff Time Spent Calling Other Providers and Receiving Calls- IIS decrease time spent by your office staff seeking immunization histories from previous providers.  Lists can also be generated to expedite school enrollment and eliminate individual calls from school personnel.

Immunization Information Systems also:

• Often have the capacity to integrate with other systems (e.g., newborn and lead screening, WIC, office billing systems and electronic medical records)
• Increase immunization data quality and completeness
• Create timely immunization reports (e.g. HEDIS, CASA and other quality improvement initiatives)
• Automate vaccine inventory, expediting ordering procedures
• Allow expeditious tracking of vaccines in case of vaccine shortages and during vaccine manufacturer recalls
• Automatically flag high-risk patients for timely annual influenza vaccination