A major provider of retail and employer-sponsored immunizations is going wireless, and doing it in a hurry.

Mollen Immunization Clinics took the "big bang" route when it rolled out cellular-enabled Google Chromebook PCs to the more than 4,000 immunization clinics the Scottsdale, Ariz.-company runs at Walmart and Sam's Club stores nationwide. On Aug. 27, Mollen went live at nearly all of those locations, just in time for the annual rush for flu shots.

In addition to the Walmart properties, Mollen has 1,500 corporate clients with thousands of job sites. The company will be rolling out the technology there next year, according to President Chris Behling.

All of the Chromebooks have built-in cellular antennas on the Verizon Wireless 3G data network. Behling believes the setup also provides better security for protected health information than if Mollen were to tap into existing wired or wireless LANs at its nearly 20,000 sites. "There is one channel for PHI to go through," he says. Otherwise, the company likely would have to perform HIPAA audits on all those other networks.

"The Verizon connectivity was most flexible to us," Behling adds. "We were also impressed with the high number of stores that are 3G," Behling adds, noting that many Walmart stores are in rural areas.

Mollen has 200,000 nurses in its database, including nearly 30,000 employed by the company and many more who have worked on a contract basis. Behling says the company sent some into Walmart and Sam's Club locations with Verizon Wireless cell phones to walk around and see how many bars they had in various parts of the stores. The signal was generally good to excellent, Behling reports.

The wireless computers will allow Mollen to take 20 million pieces of paper out of its business. "We can do things in real time," Behling says, such as pulling up records from repeat visitors. "The patient experience is significantly better," he adds, "because they're not sitting there filling out a lot of paperwork."

More importantly, the wireless technology gives the 25,000 nurses who staff the Walmart immunization clinics instant access to state vaccination registries. "The breakthrough here is in allowing us to drive the connected health/integrated case management/coordinated care agenda," Behling explains. "One of the keys to that is data."

With this data, the nurses can help patients understand where there might be gaps in their immunizations. "We're only limited by how good and robust those state registries are," according to Behling.

In addition to flu shots, Mollen clinics offer vaccinations against pneumonia, shingles, pertussis (whooping cough), hepatitis A and B, human papilloma virus, varicella (chickenpox) and meningitis.

On the back end, Mollen can, with patient consent, report information to state registries and to primary care providers, even if the practice doesn't have an electronic health record. "The vast majority are e-fax blasts," Behling says.