In the race to vaccinate as many people as possible against COVID-19, hospitals, clinics and -immunization centers find themselves having to account for every dose of this much-awaited vaccine.
As the CDC pushes out a standard set of instructions to collect, track, and analyze vaccination data, during the early phases of vaccine administration, frontline healthcare workers find themselves overwhelmed by the drastic increase in the level of the reporting and paperwork required.
The due diligence requested by the CDC is crucial as every dose is indeed precious and cannot be wasted. We already have heard reports of data loss without a proper reporting and recording structure that can lead to incorrect statistics being reported. As the last year has shown, when it comes to COVID-19 testing and tracking, we cannot afford to be complacent.
According to a widely cited report in The Guardian, a million-row limit on Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet software led to Public Health England misplacing nearly 16,000 Covid test results. This wasn’t just a case of lost data; it had an impact on thousands of lives.
However, a reliable healthcare outsourcing partner can help you shoulder this burden by providing advanced analytics for faster COVID-19 testing and vaccination tracking. Continue reading to find out more!
So, as you and your team race against time to vaccinate and report data, it’s time to step up your analytics game with much needed processing support.
When it comes to COVID-19 testing and vaccination, most centers find themselves processing between a few hundred to thousands of forms daily. For centers combing through incoming forms from multiple locations, the task of collecting and reporting data becomes even more complicated as every form has to sorted, organized and recorded by location even before data can be extracted.
Accounting for Testing and Vaccination
As states move into the vaccination phase in the fight against COVID-19, the numbers for both testing and vaccination are only going to increase further down the road.
This means more test results to confirm, more vaccines doses to report and, most of all, more patient forms and medical claims to be processed.
Additionally, as per the latest guidelines, all COVID-19 Medicare and Medicaid claims must be processed within prescribed time limits for consideration.
Instead of overburdening your already overworked medical staff with filing, processing and submitting these forms, you can delegate the task to a trusted third-party data entry and document processing company with extensive experience in the healthcare industry.
ARDEM is currently working with both private laboratories and state government health departments to collect, sort and track COVID-19 testing and vaccination data. Apart from providing real-time analytics to our clients in as quick as an hour, our team also processes patient demographics, medical insurance data and medical claims.
Regulatory State Compliances
Apart from the CDC guidelines, state public health departments are also issuing additional reporting guidelines for centers rolling out vaccination programs.
For instance, in New Jersey, all testing sites have to account for every single dose of vaccine received. This means that all vaccine doses administered in New Jersey have to be reported directly to the state website via direct entry, Excel Sheet submission or HL7 connection to the NJIIS. Additional data can also be collected through the New Jersey Vaccine Scheduling System (NJVSS).
Similarly, other state health departments may prescribe similar guidelines for reporting vaccination data. Transforming your internal processes, implementing new protocols and re-training your employees may just be too much for you to undertake at this point. You need to delegate these tasks to trained experts who can simply receive scanned copies or even images and implement all necessary compliances while making sure that your data is uploaded on time.
Automatically Track and Index Patient Analytics
Managing COVID-19 testing and vaccination data requires meticulously kept records that can be accessed at a moment’s notice within a database for reference and reporting.
Apart from reporting the daily count, the details of every individual patient also have to be recorded and reported for medical history, for employer’s records, for medical claims filing, etc.
ARDEM stores and records all this data for you by location with a cloud-based platform with customized dashboards for live reporting. We additionally tie together testing and vaccination records via history, reporting the large numbers while making sure that you have the ability to access any patient’s medical history with a few clicks.
Process and Record Patient Demographics
Patient demographics comprise different data fields that provide vital information about each specific patient and enable further categorization into specific categories for statistical analysis.
Every COVID-19 testing and vaccination form is accompanied by a corresponding patient form that contains this vital data. However, processing all this information and matching it to the correct sample is another challenge, made even more complicated by the fact that many of these forms contain handwritten data.
ARDEM employs advanced OCR, ICR, and data capture to ensure data is accurately captured from specific fields on all requisition forms. Our methodologies combine double-key data entry with automated data capture for faster turnaround and 99.97% accuracy.
Create Heat Maps for Active Tracking
Many state health departments are looking for daily reporting to create advanced heatmaps that enable them to track the density of COVID-19 cases, identify clusters and even make note of vaccinated individuals and communities.
This is another reason why reporting your testing and vaccination data accurately and timely is so crucial. All the data being reported is further collated and quantified to accentuate all efforts to ensure that no one is left behind.
Now, that we have a taken a look at the importance of tracking every single COVID-19 vaccine dose administered, let us take a look at how ARDEM can help you.
How Can ARDEM Help?
Receipt of Testing/Vaccination Forms via Scan, Fax and Email
You can scan, fax or even send us photo images of your processed forms including handwritten forms and our team will jump into action and enter them into the processing cycle.
All forms are uploaded to the ARDEM Collaboration Platform, a cloud-based platform with advanced visibility and reporting features that indexes and records every form received while showing you the progress of COVID-19 testing and vaccine data processing in real-time.
Here’s How It Works:
- You can scan, fax and email test/vaccination forms to our team.
- Forms can be received from multiple locations and sorted accordingly.
- All received forms immediately enter the processing cycle, i.e., are uploaded into our collaboration platform.
- Each form is automatically indexed.
- ARDEM implements a strategy of automated data capture and programmed validation to ensure 99.97% accuracy.
- We process data from different data fields including patient demographics and medical insurance data.
- Your data is processed and delivered in as quick as 1 hour.
- The high-quality output is shared in a Flat File, CSV, JSON, i.e., a format that can be easily ingested into your system.
- You can upload files directly into the State Vaccine Scheduling System.
- As we proceed, we scale up our services to match your increasing volumes at a lower cost.
Combining Testing and Vaccination Data Together Based on Patient
We can build additional efficiencies into your solution to enable you to track all tested patients by date/location/week/month, etc.
A COVID-19 testing and vaccination center can conduct between hundreds to thousands of test/vaccinations per day and every one of them is accompanied by corresponding paperwork that contains patient demographics as well as general information including medical insurance details and physician information.
As a result, it can be quite challenging to process all this data internally, not just processing the testing/vaccination data but also updating it for each patient.
Once ARDEM takes over your daily data processing, we help you tie COVID-19 testing and vaccination data via patient so that you can update their medical files much faster.
Faster reporting means that your patient test results are delivered faster, thereby ensuring timely treatment and even curtailing further spread. As far as meeting the state-issued guidelines is concerned, we ensure that your vaccination data is correctly reported and updated on time.
Processing Medical Claims and Insurance Data
Another important aspect of the entire testing cycle is extracting medical insurance data for proper claims processing.
One of the biggest challenges with claims processing is the need for meticulous diligence that is putting more strain on COVID-19 testing companies.
Based on the claim data that needs to be captured ARDEM will define the claims data entry template. This design will build in field validation rules, allowable provider lists, and allowable medical codes. The claims data output file layout will be defined. Once claim forms are received data entry will begin.
ARDEM processes a variety of different claims such as UB-40, UB-92, CMS-1500, HCFA, and more!
Outsourcing these tasks frees you from overburdening your current team and lets you focus on ramping up your testing capacity and improve result delivery cycles.
Prevent Data Loss while Ensuring Security and Compliance
A major concern that may arise while outsourcing COVID-19 testing and vaccination data processing is fear of a data breach due to inadequate data security.
However, at ARDEM we have considerable experience in the healthcare and biotechnology sectors, processing everything from data for tissue samples to managing entire Flu seasons with state health departments. Our team has processed millions of healthcare forms, patient forms, medical claims and Flu/HIV forms among others.
We take data security very seriously at ARDEM. We’re an ISO27001 certified company and implement security at 3 primary levels, Physical, Network and Employee.
Apart from our security compliances and protocols, we are also extremely careful about who we expose your data to. Access to sensitive data is given on a strictly need-to-know basis, and we have measures in place that ensure that your data cannot be moved, saved, edited, or seen by unauthorized team members.
As far as healthcare data is concerned, we follow all regulatory compliances including HIPAA, PCI, PHI and PII for patient data security.
If you would like to learn more about how we can help you accelerate your COVID-19 testing and vaccine data reporting, then get in touch with our team for a free consultation today!
