Published on February 8, 2012 at 8:06 AM
The authors' insights are the result of discussions at a conference convened by the National Vaccine Program Office that brought key national stakeholders together at the University of Michigan to address issues pertaining to the exchange of data between electronic health records and immunization registries.
"The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has an opportunity to align Meaningful Use incentives with functions that will enable real-time bi-directional data exchange between electronic health records and immunization registries," Dombkowski says.
"Thousands of practices are currently making significant investments in electronic health records systems but may not be able to realize their full potential," he adds. "If those electronic health records cannot be synchronized with immunization registries, the practices could experience significant time and resource demands to ensure that their immunization records are complete."
"The technology necessary to achieve bi-directional exchange between electronic health records and immunization registries is not far-fetched," says Dombkowski. "Most of what is necessary already exists. Several state immunization registries, such as Wisconsin and Colorado, have already demonstrated this capability."
"The key steps at this time are for Meaningful Use criteria to require bidirectional exchange, and for a national immunization leader - such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - to be proactive with immunization registries to determine the best way to make this happen across all electronic health records vendors," Dombkowski adds.
Source University of Michigan