Pneumococcal vaccination: perceptions of primary care physicians

Little is known about barriers to pneumococcal vaccination in the primary care setting.

Mail survey to 405 randomly selected Massachusetts primary care physicians (response rate 68%).

Seventy-nine percent considered themselves knowledgeable about current vaccination guidelines, and 75% said vaccination is an important clinical priority. Respondents answered a mean of five of six knowledge questions about vaccination "correctly," that is, consistent with current scientific evidence or expert opinion. Physicians reported high immunization rates: 51% thought over half their eligible patients were vaccinated; however, only 27% thought their colleagues immunized a similar number of patients. Physician attitude was the strongest independent predictor of high reported immunization rates (odds ratio of 4.7, P = 0.0001). Twenty-four percent of respondents thought physician oversight due to the need to attend to other active medical problems greatly reduces the number of patients they immunize. None of eight other financial, administrative, and clinical barriers were felt to be important by more than 7% of physicians. Sixty-six percent of physicians favored a standing order policy to immunize their eligible patients.

Oversight and overestimation of immunization rates appear to be important barriers to pneumococcal vaccination. The literature suggests that reminder and performance feedback systems directed toward eliminating these barriers have had some success; interventions such as standing order policies may yield further improvements and appear to be acceptable to most physicians.