Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine found that clinician and patient behavioral interventions can significantly increase flu vaccination rate.
The study, published last month in JAMA Internal Medicine, revealed that implementing subtle “nudges” to influence decision-making increased patients’ likelihood of receiving a flu vaccine by 28%. The research findings come amid stagnant flu shot uptake and rising vaccine hesitancy across the United States.
Shivan Mehta, associate chief innovation officer at Penn Medicine and co-author of the study, said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian that this study focused on patients who already come in for primary care clinician visits.
“We wanted to provide nudges or behavioral interventions to both the patient and the primary care clinician to see if these interventions, when we combine them together, can actually effectively increase flu vaccine rates during the visit — but also even in the months after their primary care visit,” Mehta said.
The paper included 80,039 patients seen across 48 primary care clinics in Philadelphia and Seattle. Participants were randomly assigned to either a control group that received standard care, or a “nudged” group that received a series of behavioral prompts.
Results showed that when compared with the control group, almost 3,000 more patients in the “nudged” group received a flu vaccine — leading the researchers to believe that such strategies could help boost the number of patients that get flu shots every year.
Kathy Wright, the associate director of the Population Health Lab, explained that the researchers “were hoping that additional nudges to the clinician might help increase the likelihood that ‘the thing’ would get done.”
“Not everything is on the patient to remember,” Wright said, “and not everything is on the clinician to remember.”
RELATED:
Four Penn Medicine studies to be honored with national clinical research award
Penn Perelman School of Medicine receives $8 million gift to 'reinvent' curriculum
Caitlin Brophy, project manager at Population Health Lab, said that the nudges included “text messages to patients prior to the visit,” and clinician facing nudges included “peer comparison feedback sent via email, and automated appended orders into the primary care visit.”
Despite Influenza hospitalizing roughly 710,000 people and causing up to 52,000 deaths nationwide each year, less than half of American adults received a flu vaccine last season, according to research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mehta attributed the intervention successes to patient trust in their primary care clinicians.
“Patients still listen to their primary care clinician,” Mehta told the DP. “They trust them, they listen to what they have to say, and they will follow through if they have the opportunity to engage with them.”
Amol Navathe, a professor at the Perelman School of Medicine, shared a similar sentiment.
“We think the automatic order encouraged primary care physicians to have a conversation with their patients, and we know these clinicians still have a lot of trust from their communities,” Navathe said.
