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Based on an early survey nearly 70% of pharmacies will be offering an option for patients to co-administer COVID-19 vaccines + Flu Shots. Today we will walk through how MedMe's novel service flagging feature can be used to co-administer these vaccines and other appointments!
What is Service Flagging?
Our philosophy is that helping pharmacists identify and vet for patients who are eligible for additional services is one of the most beneficial ways we can help increase the uptake and awareness of all your service offerings.
Learn more here
At a high-level:
Setting up co-administration for Flu within COVID-19 Appointment-types:
After co-administration is turned on:
Turning on Service Flagging for Co-Administration
First, let's enable flagging for co-administration! This will allow patients to let you know that they are interested in co-administering these services.
STEP 1: Go to either Flu or COVID-19 Vaccine Appointment-specific settings and select "Flagging"
STEP 2: Turn on Flagging for Flu Shot or COVID-19 Booster
With service flagging everything is appointment-specific. To elaborate, turning on the Flu Shot toggle within the COVID-19 appointment-type settings will display Flu Shot co-admin flagging in the COVID-19 appointment intakes. This will not automatically display COVID-19 co-admin flagging within the Flu Shot intake. To do that, you will need to go into Flu Shot appointment settings and turn on COVID-19 flagging.
COVID-19 Booster:
COVID-19 Booster Intake & Flagging for Flu Shot:
By turning on this option, the patient will see the following in the COVID-19 Booster patient intake:
Flu Shot (Regular or HD):
By turning on this option, the patient will see the following in the Flu Shot (HD/Reg) patient intake:
Flu Shot Intake & flagging for COVID-19 Boosters:
Action-ing on Patients who have been Flagged on the Pharmacy-side
Since you have turned on flagging, patients will naturally begin to indicate interest in receiving both services at the same time. How should you act on these flags? There are many actions you can take depending on what's best for your pharmacy!
STEP 1: Identifying Patients that have been Flagged:
On the weekly view you will be able to view patients who need to be action-ed at a glance through a new symbol beside the patient profile.
(!) - Indicates a patient has responded that they are interested in receiving an additional service (in this case, co-administration)
When the service has been acted on (see next step), the (!) icon will change to a star (*) icon to indicate that a patient has had a service added (in the case of co-administration it would mean an additional appointment added)
In the example above George Michael has indicated they want an additional service, and Jesse Manning has had a service added on. Removing a flag (see below) will remove all symbols from the profile.
STEP 2: Acting on the Flag
At a high-level there are 4 major actions that we expect pharmacists to take once they have identified a flag:
1) Add an appointment as a "Conduct Now"
Adding an appointment as a conduct now adds the additional service without taking up a timeslot
This option should be used if no additional time is required to accommodate this service
2) Add an appointment as a scheduled appointment
Adding an appointment as a scheduled service can be done directly underneath the original service (if your calendar has capacity)
This option should be used if you require additional time to accommodate this service and have capacity in your calendar
3) Follow-up later
You may acknowledge that the patient is interested but cannot accommodate a bundled service at the time of their appointment
Not to fret, feel free to send them a scheduling link or book them in at a later date when you can accommodate them
While we are building out a fully interactive service flagging tab on MedMe - in the meantime, we recommend going through the weekly view to view patients who still have an outstanding (!) flag and following up with them individually once you have capacity
4) Remove the flag
The patient may no longer be interested in the service in which case you can go ahead and remove the flag
Sidebar: Supply Management
As always, keeping track of supply is an important consideration when accommodating patients who are seeking both vaccines at once. This was one of the reasons why we left it to pharmacists to add an appointment or follow-up later given supply may or may not accommodate for co-administration.
To best keep track of supply we recommend responding to flags a day in advance so that you are only adding additional services to patients you have supply for. If a patient has flagged that they are interested but you don't have supply we recommend following-up at a later date.
Managing availability:
If availability is inventory-based:
If your appointment availability is based on the amount of doses you have, you may want to regularly re-visit and update it when accommodating for co-administration.
Preferably after you get a read of how many patients indicate they are interested in co-administration week-to-week you can add in a buffer within your availability to account for these patients.
Example:
For 50 Flu Shots I created 50 time slots
For 50 COVID-19 Vaccines I created 50 time slots
Over 2 weeks I had 20 patients that indicated they were seeking co-administration
For my next week I'd set availability as:
For 50 Flu Shots I create 40 time slots
For 50 COVID-19 Vaccines I create 40 time slots
This gives me buffer to accommodate the 20 patients who are seeking co-administration without overbooking based on supply
Actions to take AFTER adding a service:
So you've added the service to the appointment, what's left?
The last action that you need to do is managing documentation for the second service.
Finalizing Documentation for the Second Service
Before the Service: Send the patient a link to fill out documentation when adding the second appointment
This is great if you are able to triage your service flags in advance of the patient arriving
This will give the patient plenty of time to fill out the intake forms before they arrive at the pharmacy
Post-service: Either batch update or individually update documentation for the second service as your normally would for the rest of your patients
After the service there is nothing you'd differently than if the patient had come in for each service individually. You can batch update or individually update the profile with the vaccine details
And that's it! You are officially prepared to begin co-administering with MedMe!
Paper-option: Print the consent forms and hand it to patients at the time of their appointment for the second service
When the patient arrives you can print out the form and hand it to them to fill out
This form will then be scanned directly into the PMS
