Pharmacist impact on pediatric vaccination errors and missed opportunities in the setting of clinical decision support

Abstract

Objective: To determine pharmacist impact on vaccination errors and missed opportunities in the pediatric primary care setting with the presence of clinical decision support (CDS) by comparing a clinic with a pharmacist and CDS to a clinic with CDS alone.

Design: A retrospective chart review of patients' electronic medical records compared vaccination errors and missed opportunities between 2 pediatric primary care clinics.

Setting: Two urban, pediatric primary care clinics were selected for the study.

Participants: Encounters were included in the analysis for children presenting for any visit over a 3-month period.

Intervention: The intervention clinic had a full-time clinical pharmacist and CDS. The comparison clinic had CDS alone.

Main outcome measures: Vaccination errors were defined as follows: doses administered before minimum recommended age, doses administered before minimum recommended dosing interval, unnecessary doses, and invalid doses for a combination of these reasons. Missed opportunities were defined as vaccine doses due at the date of encounter but not administered, without documented reason for vaccination delay or refusal by provider or patient. The likelihood of missing an opportunity was also assessed for patient age, visit type, and provider type.

Results: One thousand and twenty patient encounters were randomly selected and reviewed. The vaccination error rate was 0.4% in the comparison group and 0% in the intervention group (P = 0.4995). The number of encounters with a missed opportunity was significantly higher in the comparison group compared with the intervention group (51 vs. 30 encounters with missed opportunities; P = 0.015; adjusted odds ratio, 2.14 [95% CI 1.3-35]).

Conclusion: Although the use of CDS results in a low rate of vaccination errors, technology cannot be solely relied on for vaccination recommendations in the pediatric population because of the rigidity of CDS configuration. Pharmacists continue to play a vital role to ensure that children are appropriately vaccinated in the primary care setting.