Optum and AMGF launch pilot collaborative to enhance adult vaccination rates

Sep 23 2015

The American Medical Group Foundation (AMGF) and Optum, with support from Pfizer, are launching a pilot collaborative to improve adult vaccination rates.

AMGF, the nonprofit education and research arm of the American Medical Group Association (AMGA), has established the Adult Immunization (AI) Best Practices Collaborative to develop specific interventions focused on pneumococcal and influenza vaccines. Seven care provider groups from around the country are participating in the collaborative.

With nearly 50,000 adults in the United States dying each year from vaccine-preventable infectious diseases or their complications,1 substantial improvement in vaccinations is needed to reduce the health consequences of vaccine-preventable diseases among adults.2 Despite strong public health recommendations supporting adult immunization for vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccination coverage levels among adults in the United States have remained relatively unchanged this past decade.3

"AMGA's multispecialty medical group membership and their team-based care approach is well suited to challenge the status quo of flat adult vaccination rates, that up until now have seemed intractable," said Donald W. Fisher, Ph.D., CAE, AMGA president and chief executive officer and AMGF secretary. "Through this program, our goal is to focus on an optimal mix of interventions that will help improve practice performance and public health, and reduce the clinical and economic burden of vaccine-preventable diseases."

Medical groups and health systems participating in the AMGF Best Practices Collaborative will design and implement strategies to identify and address gaps in recommended vaccination practices using intervention tools that target care providers and patients, including patient portals, alerts, and point-of-care systems. Data from the program will be evaluated after one year to assess its impact on relevant vaccination rates and to identify best practices that can be scaled broadly.

The participating care provider groups include: Community Physician Network (Indianapolis), The Iowa Clinic, P.C. (West Des Moines, Iowa), Riverside Medical Group (Newport News, Va.), Springfield Clinic (Springfield, Ill.), Swedish American Health System (Rockford, Ill.), UMass Memorial Medical Group (Worcester, Mass.) and Watson Clinic (Lakeland, Fla.).

Using data and analytics from the Optum One Population Analytics module, Optum is providing baseline vaccination rates data for each participating group, data capture, and ongoing benchmarking and analytics for the program. This data and analysis will enable the groups to assess the performance of each healthcare provider, identify unvaccinated patients, benchmark performance against peers, and evaluate the effectiveness of ongoing vaccination initiatives.

"We are at an important crossroads where the convergence of technology and population health management techniques give us the opportunity to improve the accuracy and thoroughness of the adult immunization data we capture for this pilot program, which will allow us to better translate our findings into meaningful opportunities for improving preventive care," said Michael Weintraub, president & CEO, Optum Analytics.