Capsule Commentary on Cutrona et al., Improving Rates of Outpatient Influenza Vaccination Through EHR Portal Messages and Interactive Automated Calls: a Randomized Controlled Trial

Excerpt

Electronic health records (EHRs) with tethered patient portals can be used for effective, low-cost population-based outreach. Using real-time EHR data and existing communication pathways, portal-based outreach has the potential to be applied to various preventive services and care quality metrics. In their non-blinded randomized controlled trial, Cutrona and colleagues1 examined the effectiveness of outreach via EHR-tethered patient portal messages and interactive voice response (IVR) calls, with the goal of promoting influenza vaccinations among a broad ambulatory population. The authors found a small but statistically significant improvement in influenza vaccine completion among portal users who received outreach (either a portal message, IVR call, or both), although IVR calls to non-portal users did not improve vaccination rates. Over half of the portal messages were opened by the patients to whom they were sent and a questionnaire prompted patients to self-report vaccine completion and related barriers. …