PROVIDENCE, June 26 -- When an older adult is admitted to a skilled nursing facility, the clinical team works through an intake process measured in hours. Medications need reconciling. Pressure-sore risk needs scoring. Cognitive baselines need establishing. Fall histories need logging. Somewhere on that list is a question about immunizations. For most patients, the shingles vaccine has not been given.

A new study published in Annals of Internal Medicine has measured that gap precisely, and found it worth caring about. Of 509,926 Medicare patients who moved through more than 5,500 skilled nursing facilities across the United States between 2017 and 2022, exactly 8,843 received the recombinant shingles vaccine within 12 months of their adm...