KEYWORDS:
CASA, immunization assessment, immunization registies

BACKGROUND:
Immunization Program Consultants in Louisiana's 9 regional health districts have conducted CASA assessments of Parish Health Unit offices for many years. This was a mannually intensive process that required 2-4 months of planning and implementation to complete statewide. Site visits were required to pull patient charts at public health clinics and then to enter the data into CASA for analysis. This process changed this year with the statewide rollout of the new state immunization registry, LINKS (Louisiana Immunization Network for Kids Statewide.) After dedicating staff resources to entering data on paper records for all children under age two, the assessment was able to be conducted from the state central registry in a matter of days.

OBJECTIVE(S):
1. To describe the process in converting from a manual CASA assessment to the electronic version
2. To describe the effort necessary for this conversion
3. To highlight benefits and other resource savings

METHOD(S):
Power Point Presentation
Lecture and Group Discussion

RESULT(S):
The previous 4 months process was reduced to days, which freed field staff to concentrate on other issues. They are now major advocates for the continued roll-out of the registry, as they have seen first hand how the registry tools can save time and energy.

CONCLUSIONS(S):
Dedicating resources to building a state immunization registry can be difficult at first, but once the benefits start to be realized the effort can quickly expand.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Understand the need to fully implement statewide immunization registries
2. Demonstrate the success and accuracy of CASA assessments from immunization registry data.