Those of us who practice general pediatrics everyday are quite familiar with the importance of keeping records of vaccines administered to our patients, and more and more we are doing this through data entry into our office-based electronic health record (EHR) systems. We are also aware of the need for large municipal areas or even states to maintain population-based immunization data registries—but perhaps never recognized how both the EHR and a data registry could help each other by sending and receiving information from each other.
That is until Stockwell et al. (peds.2015-4335) opted to look at the role of the New York City (NYC) Department of Health population-based immunization information system (IIS) in linking to 5 community clinics in NYC and their EHRs. Thanks to information from the IIS, the clinics were able to improve the immunization status of their patients as well as reduce over-immunization rates and likewise, the city benefited from targeting clinics that were showing under- or over-immunization rates so that up-to-date accuracy and completeness of vaccinations could be improved through the bidirectional sharing of vaccine data between EHRs and the IIS.
Dr. Simon Hambridge adds a very useful commentary (peds.2016-0962) to the information shared in this study by pointing out other advantages of using immunization registries to interface with EHRs and vice versa. Give both the study and commentary your best shot,, and if your region has a registry, hopefully after reading this study, you’ll understand why even more, and perhaps your own office-based vaccine rates will be better as a result.
