EMR Vaccine Reminders Increased HPV Immunizations in Young Men by 43%

A new study reported the cancer immunization benefits for young men when doctors fully use the reminder feature of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system.

When aged 11 to 21 years males visited EMR-using physicians, this survey based study found a relative increase of 43% in the mean probability of HPV vaccine immunizations.

This analyses clearly indicated that physicians with clinical reminder functions were more likely to order HPV vaccines for adolescent males.

Compared with female patients aged 11 to 26 years of age, there was only a relative increase of 10.7% from the mean probability of HPV vaccine immunizations.

One explanation for this variance between gender is that physicians may consider HPV to be primarily a gynecological issue.

Additionally, these researchers reported no significant associations between EMR use, race and HPV vaccination.

The researchers reported in this study, that “Clinical reminders serve as an important gateway for physicians to initiate a conversation on HPV vaccination with families.

“Especially for HPV vaccinations, where strong social barriers may exist in its disease etiology and cause, it is important to decrease other barriers for clinical opportunity.”

EMR adoption by doctors has greatly expanded over the past ten years. By the end of 2017, approximately 90% of office-based physicians nationwide will be using electronic health records, according to Practice Fusion.

Most pharmacies do not use an EMR, but do offer patient-centric reminders for medication synchronization.

The CDC currently recommends two doses of the HPV vaccine for teens younger than 15 and three doses for those who start the vaccine series at ages 15 through 26.

The Gardasil 9 vaccine immunizes against nine genotypes of HPV known to cause cervical cancer, as well as vulvar, vaginal and anal cancers and genital warts caused by HPV.

The CDC Vaccine Price List provides the private sector vaccine prices for general information.

Most pharmacies offer vaccination services, including HPV.

HPV vaccine discounts can be found here.

These researchers did not disclose any conflicts of interest: Jaeyong Bae, PhD; Eric W. Ford, PhD, MPH; Shannon Wu, BA; and Timothy Huerta, PhD, MS.