Active Choice to Increase Flu Vaccination Rates
Project status
Collaborators
Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD
Dylan Small, PhD
Craig Wynne, MD
Jingsan Zhu, MBA
Lin Yang, MS
Susan Day, MD, MPH
Innovation leads
Funding
Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania
National Institute on Aging
Opportunity
The influenza (flu) virus contributes significantly to morbidity and mortality each year. Although the vaccine has been shown to effectively reduce disease and economic burdens, vaccination rates remain low at under 50 percent nationally.
Intervention
We implemented an active choice intervention in the electronic health record (EHR) that alerted care providers about patient eligibility during clinic visits and prompted them to accept or decline an order for the flu vaccine.
Impact
Results from the study showed that the intervention led to an increase in vaccination order rates of six percentage points, representing a 37 percent relative increase compared to the last flu season.
Based on these findings, the health system decided to implement the approach across all primary care clinics in the Penn Medicine network.