Improving Pneumococcal Vaccination Rates in SubSpecialty clinics (ImPReSS)

The ImPReSS goal is to improve pneumococcal vaccination rates in all UPMC medical subspecialty outpatient clinics by educating patients and providers, by creating sophisticated, novel algorithms to identify eligible patients and document their current vaccination status, and by creating unique workflow changes for each subspecialty to ensure eligible patients are receiving the appropriate vaccine. ImPReSS will target all eligible patients (over 310,000) and 372 physicians in 99 clinics. As part of our academic mission, we will include the 291 residents and clinical fellows who are currently training in the Department of Medicine. ImPReSS will  create an automated, electronic medical record (EMR)-based, system-wide program, which will provide an electronic algorithm for identification and management of high-risk patients who are eligible by national standards for pneumococcal vaccination. To facilitate adoption of this process, ImPReSS will make education of patients, providers, and clinic staff a key objective. Regular feedback will include quarterly vaccination rates of providers and clinics, with anonymous peer-to-peer comparisons to drive change. Feedback provided to the Steering Committee will illuminate barriers and areas for improvement. Based on our collective experience with quality improvement initiatives like this, we expect to achieve ≥90% pneumococcal vaccination rates using education of all healthcare staff, logic-driven decision trees that are seamless with current clinic workflows, and rapid cycling of feedback. By developing this as a module in Epic, a widely used EMR, and by involving nearly 300 trainees, we expect that ImPReSS will have a very strong impact on national pneumococcal vaccination
rates.