Vaccinations

The whole cycle of vaccination information is a complex process and therefore the release of vaccination messaging will be deployed and go live with different elements at different times. This overview covers only primary care administered vaccinations.

• vaccinations are being recorded in triplicate in many GP surgeries which is a large administrative overhead
• uptake for some vaccinations is low as is being reported in the news, better ways of managing and evidencing the pathway are needed
• health visiting services which are no longer part of an integrated community system with a CHIS module (such as in London) may no longer receive vaccinations information directly, creating a gap in the health visiting clinical record. This message will close those gaps.
• There is no holistic vaccination record for a child, whilst the GP system will hold the GP administered vaccinations, vaccinations administered in elsewhere may not make into the GP record.

The vaccination pathway is time sensitive and sequential and consists of multiple doses of some vaccines. Whether a vaccine is given or not determines what happens next in the pathway, for example, if a vaccination is given, then the child is called for the next dose; if a vaccination is not given, then the child is recalled for the original vaccination and first dose. This is therefore a pathway most suited to proactive 

publishing of what has happened so that the pathway can be failsafe and the appropriate actions taken.

In addition, the vaccination pathway is part of a public health programme, rather than a consultation encounter model and so health professionals will not be opening each child’s record to find or retrieve information. CHIS and health visiting services run huge caseloads so rely on exception reporting and flagging to inform them that there is a problem in a pathway.

Health visiting services don’t always have vaccination records available in their system, leading to lack of knowledge of children in their care and an inability to advise parents appropriately.

The new process means that health visiting systems will receive vaccinations automatically when published and ingest the results into the child’s record. Health visiting systems can then flag children missing vaccinations to alert health visiting to children or families needing additional support and health education concerning the benefits of immunisations.

As CHIS, health visiting  and Digital Redbook systems are notified of the child’s birth and can auto-subscribe to all future information, in many cases there will be limited need for retrospective data capture, vaccinations can be proactively sent as they occur.

The release and go live of Vaccination messaging may be deployed across different timescales and include different elements of the release. This will depend on the supplier and different across organisations.

The steps/phases that may be deployed during the vaccination release period could be the following:

Phase 1 

Phase 1 will not affect how you record and process vaccinations. Immunisation data already recorded will additionally flow to NEMS and from there to the health visiting service. If you pass on immunisation details to health visiting, you will no longer need to do so.

Phase 2 

Phase 2 vaccinations details will flow from the person/health care service giving and recording the immunisations to NEMS and from there to CHIS services and health visiting services or associated Health professionals.  This will replace current data flows. 

The table below lists the data fields in Vaccinations of both phase 1 and phase 2 go live are deployed.

This table helps you identify the potential benefits of receiving vaccinations via NEMS. The level of benefits depends on your current processes.