UNC Cancer Hospital Combines RWD and Patient-Centered Care to Identify Unvaccinated Patients

A team of healthcare professionals at the University of North Carolina’s NC Cancer Hospital used real world data (RWD) derived from electronic health records to identify unvaccinated patients. Nurses then called the patients to discuss their reasons for being unvaccinated, which ranged from a lack of familiarity with online patient portals, a lack of internet access, or concerns regarding vaccine safety. Following outreach efforts, approximately a quarter of identified patients scheduled a COVID-19 vaccine.

Oncologist Jacob Stein remarks, “Many of the patients who met our criteria for potentially missing the outreach for Covid were also people that were really struggling in the pandemic,” adding, “As much as an analytics approach is great to identify the patient population, an algorithm can never do that human element of listening.” Read more here.

(Source: Katie Palmer, STAT News, 8/25/21)