To: / General Practitioners, Practice Nurses, Practice Managers, Health Professionals
From: / Rayoni Keith, Manager, Immunisation
Subject: / 2016 funded influenza vaccine availability, NIR changes
2016 Seasonal Influenza Immunisation Programme
We are very pleased to announce the funded influenza vaccine will be sent to providers earlier than expected. Healthcare Logisticswill begin sending the funded vaccine to providers with pre-orders commencing in the week beginning 7 March.
Note: please ensure you have influenza vaccine in your fridge before booking clinics.
This year’s influenza programme will be officially launched on 6 April but you may commence vaccinating before this date to ensure your patients are offered protection before winter hits. Vaccine can be ordered online at theform can be downloaded from
Please note the changes to the minimum order requirements as follows:
March / April / May / June / JulyMin 60 doses / Min 60 doses / Min 60 doses / Min 20 doses / Min 10 doses
Further ordering information is available online
The funded influenza vaccines are INFLUVAC® and FLUARIX®. These are the only influenza vaccines that are funded as part of the 2016 Seasonal Influenza Immunisation Programme, and claim submission for any other influenza vaccine will not be accepted.
Flu vaccination indicator for pregnant women
As part of the NIR changes a new indicator for pregnant women has been added to the NIR and PMS systems. When recording an influenza vaccination given to a pregnant woman, please select the "Flu-pregnant" indicator in your PMS rather than any other indicator. This will allow the Ministry to later identify all influenza vaccinations given to pregnant women. Influenza vaccinations given to pregnant women are free.
ESR influenza surveillance
National sentinel influenza surveillance gets underway on 2 May this year. Local influenza coordinators are in the process of contacting practices to discuss the upcoming season and to introduce exciting improvements to the surveillance platform. ESR has developed and piloted an automated electronic data collection form that will be rolled out to national sentinel practices to replace the old manual data collection method. The new protocol also sees surveillance for Auckland and Wellington practices expanded to collect swabs for every patient with influenza-like illness, allowing for vaccine effectiveness calculations. This surveillance system is very important to New Zealand's seasonal influenza control and informing pandemic preparedness. For further information please contact your local influenza coordinator or Liza Lopez, National Influenza Coordinator, at ESR
Attention: all GPs, practice nurses and practice managers
NIR Task Notifications being activated for Standard and HPV Programmes
General Practices will now be receiving NIR notifications of adult, human papillomavirus (HPV) and special groups’ vaccinations given to their patients by other health care providers.
Why this change?
While General Practicesreceive NIR notifications of childhood vaccines given by other health care providers, they have not been receiving NIR notifications of adult, human papillomavirus (HPV) and special groups’ vaccinations.
These notifications from the NIR to General Practiceshave been enabled in response to requests from GPs and feedback from the RNZCGP, who identified a clinical riskif GPs do not have information about vaccines that were administered to their patients by other health care providers.
What is changing?
Thenew notifications process will be progressively rolled out to General Practicesbetween mid-February and mid to late March 2016.
Each General Practice will start to receive notifications for the adult, HPV and special groups’ vaccinations once their NIR administrator has enabled them. This will happen progressively within DHBs rather than all at once.
Notifications will be received for the following vaccines:
- Influenza
- Varicella
- Meningococcal (A,C,Y &W 135) conjugate
- Meningococcal C conjugate
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B DLK
- HPV
- Tdap-Primary Course and
- MMR-Primary Course
NB: Notifications for these vaccinations will only be sent if GPs have previously recorded themselves as the individual’s nominated provider on the NIR.
The following vaccine notifications will also be sent once the NIR/PMS 2015 changes go live.
- Td-45Y
- Td-65Y
- Tdap-Pregnant
What do General Practices have to do?
Please accept these notification messages so that the vaccination information can go into your PMS clinical records. The notification will only be sent once.
Will General Practices get notifications of historic vaccinations administered to their patient by other health care providers?
No. Notifications are not activated retrospectively. Practices will only receive notifications going forward from the date they are selected to receive notifications.The full historic immunisation history for a patient is still available from the NIR through an immunisation status query.
Will a GP receive notifications only at some clinics where they practice?
If a GP has registered on the NIR to receive notifications, the GP will receive notifications at all clinics they are associated to.
Will General Practices receive notifications of all vaccinations their patients receive from other health care providers?
GPs must have previously recorded themselves as a patient’s nominated provider in order to receive their notifications. Only vaccinations that are recorded on the NIR will be notified – some providers do not have access to the NIR and not all vaccines are recorded on the NIR, eg zoster and travel vaccines. The Ministry is gradually increasing access to the NIR.
Support
Please contact your DHB NIR Administrator if youexperience any issues with receiving notifications.
Online vaccinator updates
IMAC has launched three new online vaccinator updates for 2016:
- 2016 Vaccinator Update: Public Health Nurses. Like other vaccinator updates, this provides basic information about all immunisation, but also includes information focused particularly on immunisation practice of Public Health nurses and school based vaccinations, such as the new module on the HPV programme -
- 2016 Midwives Immunisation Update covers basic information about National Immunisation Schedule for conversations about immunisation decisions and the course focuses on information to support midwives who are communicating with or vaccinating pregnant women and their babies. This course is credited with the Midwifery Council for ongoing education points -
- 2016 Vaccinator Update: Pharmacists. This covers a review of immunisation in general and is more focused on the reclassified vaccines administered by pharmacists -
The two existing vaccinator updates (Infant to adult vaccinator and Adolescent to adult vaccinators) will include the new HPV module for the benefit of those who provide HPV immunisations.
If you have any queries about anything in this update, please email