Improving Pneumococcal Vaccination Rates in Rheumatology Patients by Using Best Practice Alerts in the Electronic Health Records.

Objective: To improve pneumococcal vaccination (PV) rates among rheumatology clinic patients on immunosuppressive therapy in the outpatient settings.

Methods: This quality improvement project was based on the pre-post intervention design. Phase I of the project targeted patients with rheumatoid arthritis from 13 rheumatology clinics (January 2013-July 2015) on immunosuppressive therapy to receive the pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPSV23).