Scientific Technologies Corporation Uses their Analytics and Collaboration with The University of Texas to Tell the Story of Immunization Gaps
Industry: Healthcare
In collaboration with the Health Informatics and Health IT Program at the McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin, STC worked with a team of students to explore opportunities within retail pharmacy immunization programs using a dataset with over three million immunization events nationwide.
Phoenix, AZ (PRUnderground) September 7th, 2018
Pharmacy flu shots made up 70% of the immunization events and the remainder fell into a number of vaccine families, namely Pneumonia, Tdap and Zoster.
Sean Oslin and Lauren Hadjimarcou, students in the Health Informatics and Health IT Professional Certificate Program, led the effort and worked with Dr. Leanne Field, Program Director, and Robert Ligon, a faculty member and researcher, to uncover the stories in these data.
Michael L. Popovich, CEO of STC, said, “You cannot just tell pharmacists to better protect their customers by providing more immunizations. You have to give them a score card. Golfers strive to shoot par, baseball players reach for the 300 batting average, divers a 10 and runners a sub five-minute mile. Show a pharmacist their Immunization Score (ImzScore™) compared to the top performers in their market, and the potential increase in revenue, and everybody wins.” “Then,” said Popovich, “show the top performer where new opportunities are in their market and you have raised the bar for everyone.”
The McCombs team developed a set of analytic dashboards that compared pharmacy immunization program success in different vaccination categories. Some key takeaways the data uncovered are as follows:
- 55% immunizations were received by women
- The median age of those vaccinated was 55
- Fewer than 3% of the total immunization events were provided to individuals who resided in other states
- As would be expected, individual store metrics varied, but top performers had a three-fold increase in administered immunizations compared with lower performing stores (i.e., three times the earned revenue)
The team concluded that key next steps are to focus on understanding each pharmacy’s market demographics, individual immunization program and marketing efforts, and pharmacy workflows. If we can combine this information with the power of analytics, we can create an individual action plan for each pharmacy and exponentially increase the opportunities to improve population health.
ABOUT HEALTH INFORMATICS & HEALTH IT AT MCCOMBS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
The Health Informatics and Health Information Technology (HIHIT) Program at the McCombs School of Business aims to improve health through education and training, innovation, and research and discovery. HIHIT supports better care, value, and work life in healthcare and thereby better health by developing and implementing activities to improve key healthcare processes, and leading advances in health informatics and information technology.
About STChealth
STChealth’s mission is to eradicate vaccine preventable disease and empower individuals through our innovative technology and service solutions. We deliver on our mission through passion and innovation, through teamwork and inclusion, through superior client service and products, and a relentless pursuit of the next ”big idea” that will advance immunization intelligence. Starting with developing the first Immunization Information System (IIS) and over 35 years of experience in the immunization ecosystem, STChealth is positioned today to support more than 1/3 of COVID-19 vaccinations reported in the U.S. through our network of over 70,000 Providers and Pharmacy Partners. More information can be found at www.STChealth.com
