Vaccination UK partners with RIVIAM to digitise provision of children’s immunisations across numerous counties and boroughs in England
Benefits of RIVIAM
- Saves costs by removing printing and delivery of eConsent forms.
- Reduces environmental impact.
- Increases staff productivity by reducing triage time by approximately 90%.
- Improves data accuracy and timeliness, enabling insights to increase return rates and encourage vaccination uptake.
- Improves quality of care.
Providing the safest, most efficient immunisation service
Vaccination UK has been delivering NHS school-aged immunisation programmes since 2015 and is recognised as an experienced and progressive provider. In 2021, Vaccination UK chose RIVIAM as its digital immunisations platform to support future expansion and provide the safest, most efficient immunisation service possible for children in Hertfordshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire, the Black Country, 9 Boroughs of North East London and East Anglia. In 2023, this was extended to include Yorkshire and Humber.
For the 2023/2024 immunisation programmes, RIVIAM is expecting to process over 1.1 million consents.
Teams no longer have to carry out manual repetitive tasks. With the time saved, they can focus on providing the best care and use data insights to increase vaccination uptake.
The challenge
A digital first agenda is now at the heart of the NHS and Vaccination UK recognised the need to move to a secure online system to create the most efficient immunisations service and deliver the best care.
They no longer wanted to rely on costly and inefficient paper-based processes. Each consent form had to be printed and sent by courier to schools. For almost 1 million children, this was a considerable expense. Once returned, each form had to be individually manually checked and triaged.
Also, the teams didn’t always have the most up to date data to encourage parents/carers to return consent forms and take-up vital vaccinations for their children. This issue was particularly pressing in some areas, such as in some boroughs of NE London, where vaccination uptake was particularly low due to a myriad of reasons.
From Sept 2021 to Sept 2022, RIVIAM processed almost 200,000 eConsents for Vaccination UK’s COVID-19, DTP/Meningitis, HPV and Flu vaccination programmes. For 2022/2023, RIVIAM is expecting to process approx. 1 million consents for Vaccination UK.
RIVIAM' solution
Schools now send parents/carers a link to a Vaccination UK branded eConsent form. This has been customised to meet Vaccination UK’s exact requirements.
With FAQs and plenty of educational information, it takes just a few minutes to complete the form. Once submitted, parents receive a useful confirmation email with a unique reference code.
“Following COVID-19, our priority is is to ensure maximum awareness and uptake of important vaccinations for primary and adolescent school children. Insights from data is central to our ability to do this and why RIVIAM's system is core to our strategy.
” James Hart, Head of Operations for NHS Services, Vaccination UK
Only 10% of consents require triage
Consents are instantly received by Vaccination UK into a pathway on RIVIAM where they are automatically filtered into queues based on the work required, including checking for duplicates or conflicts. For approximately 90% of consents, the system highlights the child is simply ready for vaccination. Where a parent has added information about a potential clinical issue, consents are received into a queue for triage.
Increasing data accuracy
RIVIAM auto-checks the child’s demographic information added by a parent on the consent form using the NHS Spine Mini Service. Where there is a match, the NHS number is added to the child’s record on RIVIAM and the school list (a ‘no match’ is also flagged). This provides complete confidence in the patient identifier when vaccination outcomes are shared with other NHS systems.
Managing uptake using RIVIAM
The number of consents returned per school can easily be seen, so Vaccination UK can follow up with schools where returns are low. A new RIVIAM School’s Portal available in autumn 2022, will provide the number and percent of returns per school (and ‘yes’ and ‘no’ consents) calculated versus the school list. This data will be available to schools as well as Vaccination UK, supporting timely interventions.
Managing clinics
Clinics are currently managed by Vaccination UK using electronic clinic spreadsheets. In 2022, these will be replaced by RIVIAM’s immunisations app on Apple iPads. With the app, nurses will have their clinic list and information about each child on their device. It’s intuitive, easy to use and works at a school regardless of internet connection. Vaccination outcomes flow directly from the app to RIVIAM updating the child’s record. For community clinics, Vaccination UK will also soon use RIVIAM’s bookable forms. These make it easy for parents to book an appointment choosing the location, date and time of their child’s vaccination.
Data reporting made easy
RIVIAM enables Vaccination UK to report vaccination outcomes to the National Immunisation and Vaccination System (NIVS) and local CarePlus CHIS systems. As well as this, RIVIAM provides bespoke reports as required.
“The introduction of eConsent has improved accessibility to our service. A paper consent form is easily lost in a school bag or misplaced. E-consent has allowed VUK to engage with parents through a wider range of avenues. We can now circulate consent materials easily via email, parentmail, text message and social media. This gives service users a greater opportunity to access our service at their convenience.
Furthermore, using the RIVIAM system, parents receive notification of vaccinations administered in real time giving them peace of mind that their child has been given the protection they deserve.” James Hart, Head of Operations for NHS Services, Vaccination UK
Benefits for Vaccination UK
- Saves costs by removing printing and delivering/collecting paper consent forms from schools.
- Reduces environmental impact of printing and delivery journeys.
- Bespoke forms to meet Vaccination UK’s exact requirements.
- Increases staff productivity by reducing triage time by approximately 90%.
- Improves data accuracy and timeliness, enabling insights to increase return rates and encourage vaccination uptake.
- Improves quality of care because nurses using the app have more time to spend with children.
- Improves accessibility to Vaccination UK's service.
- Supports efficient reporting to commissioners.
- Supports team working through easier care co-ordination and collaboration.
- Enables delivery of integrated care with schools who, via the School’s Portal, can more easily add cohort lists and see consent return information.
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