Why and How Pediatric Practices Should Launch a Recall Initiative Today

Pediatric practices are navigating a new and urgent challenge: massive shifts in federal Medicaid and vaccine policy. With the conclusion of continuous enrollment protections, millions of children are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage, while new recommendations for COVID-19, RSV, and flu vaccines require clear communication with families.

These changes threaten to disrupt continuity of care and lower immunization rates across the country. To counteract this, practices must be more proactive than ever. PCC recommends that all practices launch a strategic patient recall initiative now to ensure families are informed, their coverage is active, and their children remain up to date on essential preventative care.

Why Should My Practice Increase Patient Recall Efforts Now?

If you are concerned about Medicaid cuts and vaccine policy changes, chances are that some of your patients and families are too. You can use this opportunity to support and guide the families that you serve, and get your patients treated while they are still covered.

Here’s why PCC recommends that every practice perform patient recalls:

• Respond to Medicaid Changes: Upcoming changes to Medicaid and vaccine policy may affect your patients and families, as well as the overall health of the community that your practice serves. See your Medicaid patients while they still have coverage.

• Preventative Care is Always Beneficial: AAP strongly encourages pediatricians to continue with their preventive care services. Every missed Bright Futures guideline is an evidence-based lost opportunity to address important developmental issues with children. Pediatric practices are on the front lines for issues around vision, hearing, height, weight, dental health, depression, ADHD, lead, and more.

• Pediatricians Identify Abuse and Neglect: Pediatricians, teachers, and other mandated reporters who provide direct care are on the front line of identifying abuse and neglect.

• Your Performance-Based Measures Are Still In Play: Practices receiving performance-based payments nearly always depend on the services performed during preventive care visits.

Inform Patients of the Value of Vaccines

Make sure that your vaccine policy is up-to-date and written in a way that is accessible to the population that you serve. When you share your policy with families, consider referencing recommendations from the AAP and your state’s health department that support preventive care and chronic disease management visits.

Does your practice use ShotBlocker, Buzzy, or colorful ice packs for fearful patients? When you reach out about vaccine clinics, share what makes your practice special, and emphasize how you’re going to take care of your patients and families during their visit.

Adjust Visit Workflow

As you plan for a patient recall initiative, your practice should decide which kinds of visits you are able to deliver at this time.

If your community is struggling with vaccine-preventable diseases, such as Measles, consider how you will screen patients to avoid spreading disease within your office. Plan how you will manage patients with vaccine-preventable diseases who do enter your office.

Check that you are using up-to-date charting protocols that support your conversations with families about vaccine-preventable diseases. Make sure that you have prepared talking points and handouts ahead of your visits.

How will you decide which visits can you perform using telemedicine and which will require a vaccine clinic or a longer in-person visit? Your decision may be impacted by payment and resources available to you. Your state’s payment rules and individual practice resources will dictate what is appropriate and possible.

After this evaluation, you’ll be able to direct patients to the proper visit method.

Clean Up Your Practice’s Patient List Before You Do a Large Recall

Before you contact large groups of your patients, your practice should do a quick review of your active patient lists.

You can run a patient list report in the PCC EHR Report Library and review a list of your active patients (those who have visited your practice in the past 3 years, for example).

Flag any patients that you know should be marked as “inactive”, “transferred”, or “hospital only” (e.g., you saw them as a newborn but they never came to your practice). When you perform your patient recall, you can exclude patients with those flags.

PCC can configure your practice’s system to automatically “autoflag” patients and families based on criteria, such as visit frequency. Contact PCC Support for assistance.

Perform Recalls For Specific Patients and Needs

Which patients should you identify and recall for appointments, and when?

Consider the following groups of patients for your recall:

• • Respond to Medicaid Changes: Upcoming changes to Medicaid and vaccine policy may affect your patient population. Get your Medicaid patients seen now, before they lose coverage..

  • Overdue Well: Recall patients who are overdue (or are about to become overdue) for regular well visits. The screening and guidance directed by Bright Futures are vitally important.

  • Overdue Vaccines (Under 2): Recall patients who are overdue (or are about to become overdue) for any of the vaccines recommended by age 2. Preventing a measles outbreak is just as vital and important as ever.

  • Overdue Vaccines (Adolescent): Recall patients who are overdue (or are about to become overdue) for any of the adolescent vaccine series (HPV, Meningococcal, TdaP).

  • Overdue Vaccines (School/Daycare Required): Recall patients who are overdue (or are about to become overdue) for any of the vaccines needed for daycare or school. Families struggling to manage daycare coverage do not want to be held up by an overdue vaccine.

  • High BMI and Obesity Management: Recall patients who have a high BMI % or known obesity concerns. Follow up on nutrition plans and weight management, and provide additional resources these patients may need (for example, how to get healthy meals from school).*

  • Depression and Anxiety: Recall patients who have active depression or anxiety diagnoses (or active meds for these conditions) or other behavioral or developmental concerns.*

  • ADHD: Recall patients who are on ADHD medications who need a followup.*

  • Asthma: Recall patients with asthma diagnoses who need a medication followup or who need an adjustment to their Asthma Action Plans.*

  • Care Plans: Recall patients with active Care Plans that may need review or adjustment.*

  • Referrals: Follow up on open referrals and other incomplete orders. This work is a vital Care Management service.*

*Telemedicine-Friendly Visits: These encounters may work well as a telemedicine encounter or phone/portal message encounter. They may not require an in-person visit, and yet they are particularly valuable during a time of high stress and anxiety. If your practice provides integrated mental health services, you can work with your clinicians to develop a patient recall focus in that area.

How to Code and Bill For These Visits

If you have questions about coding and billing for telemedicine or any type of visit, join one of PCC’s billing drop-in web labs where we discuss coding, billing, and practice management topics.

Create a Library of Resources and Links for Your Patients and Families

When you recall and see patients, what additional resources can you provide? PCC recommends you review your standard links, handouts, and materials and expand them to address current topics.

Your practice’s library of resources will engage your patients before and after visits, make your in-person time more efficient and effective, and promote the value of pediatric work.

Use PCC’s Reports and Other Tools to Perform Your Recall

Which tools will you use to recall patients? PCC offers a variety of patient communication tools, summarized in this article.

How will you create a list of patients, filter it based on criteria, and then contact your patients and families?

PCC EHR’s Report Library, which has customizable reports with a wide range of criteria for performing a recall. Patient-based reports also include PCC’s built-in Broadcast Messaging feature, which will allow you to send emails and text messages to your patients and families.

The following reports in the PCC EHR Report Library will help you identify and contact appropriate patients:

• • • Preventive Care Recall report
    • Chronic Condition Recall report
    • Care Plans by Date report
    • Vaccine Recall report
    • Orders By Visit report (for referrals or other incomplete long-term orders)

If you run a patient-based report, you can then click “Export” to send a custom email and/or text message to patients and families. If you use order and procedure based reports (like the Vaccine Recall report and Orders By Visit), you can customize the output to include contact information and export the list.

Learn More By Seeing Examples: To learn how to run recall reports, you can watch the Recall Patients for Preventive Well Visits video, or read example procedures in Recall Overdue Patients for Well or Chronic Condition Visits or Find and Recall Patients Who Are Overdue for Vaccines.

Customize Report Criteria and Output: Want to learn how to customize a PCC EHR report? Watch or read Create a Custom Report (video, article).

If you need help finding, running, or customizing your recall reports to your practice’s specific need, contact PCC Support.

Review Responses and Mass Messaging Details

Did messages go out, and are you reaching patients? If you use PCC’s built-in broadcast messaging features, you can later run the Broadcast Messaging Log report to examine your recall activity. In addition to tracking down missing contact information, your practice can use PCC’s reporting tools to evaluate the visit volume impact of performing a recall.

Read Send Broadcast Messages to Patients and Families or watch the accompanying video to learn more.