KEYWORDS:
Pediatric Emergency Departments, Immunization Registry, Collaboration

BACKGROUND:
Despite recent investigations reporting Pediatric Emergency Departments (PED) patients are at risk for under-immunization, no use of Immunization Registries (IR) in PED has been reported. A 14-county computerized IR operational since 1998 was used in an urban PED to determine value of such use.

OBJECTIVE(S):
Determine prevalence of participation and under-immunization rate in a regional IR among patients presenting to a university PED. Rate of agreement between parental report and documented immunization status was also measured.

METHOD(S):
Prospective, observational cohort study. During a 7 week period (summer, 2001), a convenience sample of parents of patients <11 years registered in the PED, were approached. With informed consent, the IR was accessed via computer to ascertain patient participation and currency of immunizations. Agreement between parental report and IR immunization status was also calculated.

RESULT(S):
698 (97%) of 720 patients approached consented to participate. Of these, 235 (34%) were enrolled in the IR. 67 (29%) of parents of IR children were aware they were enrolled. Of IR patients, 225 (96%) stated they were current (UTD), while 121 (51%) were documented UTD.

CONCLUSIONS(S):
A significant number of patients seen in the PED were in the IR. Half were documented UTD for all vaccines, while almost all the parents reported the child was current. Because IR provides objective documentation of vaccination status, its shows potential use may facilitate intervention in under-immunized children.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
To see how an IR and a PED worked together to establish value of an IR in a PED.