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Partnership aims to benefit school-located vaccination programs
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School-located vaccination programs, despite their benefits, struggle to remain financially sustainable, according to study data published in Pediatrics.
Heather M. Limper, MPH, of the University of Chicago Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues addressed potential solutions to challenges they encountered during the implementation of Health4Chicago, a school-located vaccination program that served nearly 40 schools during the 2013-2014 school year.
Health4Chicago is a partnership between the University of Chicago Medicine and the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. The program aims to provide financially sustainable at-school immunizations to adolescents and school-age children while educating about recommended vaccines and facilitating Medicaid enrollment for uninsured children.
Last school year, Health4Chicago administered more than 2,100 vaccinations to more than 1,700 children in Chicago public schools.
Most school-located vaccination programs begin as a collaboration between schools and a local health department, academic medical center or both.
According to Limper and colleagues, school-located vaccination programs coordinated by academic medical centers face several challenges, including administrative fees on clinical revenue, lack of financial transparency, and various legal roadblocks. To combat these challenges and promote success, the researchers suggest:
- Establishing unique cost centers for all program aspects such as vaccine purchasing, printing promotional materials, and staffing;
- Incorporate medical center and overhead billing expenses into program’s budget;
- Employ a financial administrator with solid medical center experience;
- Establish how to enroll an uninsured, Medicaid-eligible child into the immunization program. Once enrolled, Medicaid can be billed.
Despite these suggestions, reimbursement rates for adolescent immunization remains a challenge for both school and office-based practices.
“Standardization of payments from private insurers would overcome the seemingly insurmountable complexity of the reimbursement system,” the researchers wrote. “Until such standardization occurs, knowing and ensuring correct payment for immunization from private insurers requires the guidance and substantial time commitment of a capable financial administrator.”
Disclosure: Some of the researchers report financial ties with Merck and Medimmune.
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