KEYWORDS:
Integration
BACKGROUND:
Immunization interfaces between registries are being developed all over the nation today. RECIN of Marshfield Clinic and WIR of the State of Wisconsin have developed such an interface using the HL7 Version 2.3.1 standard. Long before this interface, RECIN did several integrations on area facilities joining the registry. We learned early on that immunization integration is not an exact science:
· Lack of a national UPI and restrictions on usage of SSN leaving just demographics and immunizations to match up patients.
· Problems with quality and inability to determine dose # from billing systems data.
· Difficulties involved in accurately merging historical immunization record sets.
OBJECTIVE:
Inform registries developing interfaces of a “last-chance” integration approach, i.e. last chance to verify the data before it is committed.
METHOD:
In RECIN we store incoming data from the interface in a separate area until a user of the registry selects the patient and verifies:
1) The patient was matched up correctly.
2) The computer‘s decisions on how it wants to integrate the data are correct.
RESULT:
When the decision was made to run the interface this way, we were unsure of how our customers would react. Thus far RECIN users have not indicated that it’s taking a lot of extra time to verify the incoming data and for the most part has been very well received. As of 6/11/03, the 18 out of 88 facilities using the interface data have pulled in 4,383 immunizations on 848 patients.
CONCLUSION:
Our “last-chance” approach to verifying incoming data from an on-going/never ending interface has thus far proven to be an affective way to verify decisions a computer system can’t always make correctly due to the non-exact science of interfacing separate immunization registries.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
See Objective(s)
Back to Quality Improvement -- The Key to a Successful Registry
Back to The 2003 Immunization Registry Conference (October 27-29, 2003)