Question: Why does an important immunization (e.g., first dose COVID-19 vaccine) not appear in the Connect Care immunization history?
Context: A blog posting clarifies where in Connect Care a patient's immunization history can be found, and a Manual section explains how to add vaccination information to that history. The Connect Care record of care should have a complete listing of the most recent instance of all vaccination types, just like it should have a complete listing of a patient's medications, problems and surgical history.
Many prescribers are not accustomed to checking immunization histories. However, this has become increasingly important to pandemic care. Accordingly, more is being done to automatically pull recent immunizations into things like summative documentation (e.g., discharge summaries), health maintenance reminders and even order sets.
Most patients will have some information in their Connect Care immunization record. This may have come from system interfaces with Netcare or pre-Connect Care legacy clinical information systems (e.g., eCLINICIAN). However, there are many reasons why the immunization record may be incomplete:
- System interfaces are recent and may not include relevant immunizations (e.g., pneumovax) from many years ago.
- Some immunizations (e.g., some private travel vaccination clinics) may not share information with provincial systems.
- Immunizations may have been received outside the reach of provincial immunization management systems.
- Some immunization information shared with Connect Care from external systems is added at set intervals (e.g., end of month), and so may appear in Connect Care days to weeks after administration.
Answer: When a patient reports having had COVID-19 vaccination but there is no corresponding record in the Connect Care immunization history, consider whether this might simply result from a delayed interface information feed. If the patient has the immunization record provided at the time of vaccination, a clinician can enter this information to the Connect Care record.