Missed opportunities for influenza vaccination in office-based settings occur when patients (who are inclined to accept influenza vaccination if a provider recommends it) remain unvaccinated after a fall/winter healthcare visit. Healthcare providers can be very influential in encouraging patients to obtain influenza vaccination, but little is known in real-time during annual campaigns of how many and what type of providers are actually giving vaccinations in office settings. Many factors affect the ultimate population coverage including taking advantage of opportunities to vaccinate during medical visits. This suggests that provider vaccination behavior, if leveraged, could result in higher rates of influenza vaccine coverage. “Big” healthcare data in the form of high volume streams of electronic healthcare reimbursement claims (eHRCs) can potentially be used to track influenza vaccine administration practices in office-based settings in near real-time, thus empowering public health officials to provide this feedback to practitioners and potentially modify behaviors.
Objective
This paper describes the results of formative research to develop a new metric for public health officials to use in near-real-time tracking of the weekly participation of office-based providers in community influenza vaccination campaigns.