BACKGROUND:
The Tennessee Immunization Registry is a statewide registry operational in all 95 county health departments of the state. The registry is also operational in various private providers practices accross the state using a web based application and HL7. Due to the various sources from which the immunization registry receives data and updates information duplicate records are sometimes created.

OBJECTIVE:
Provide information that details the processes and methods used to minimize duplicate entries within the immunizaiton registry.

METHOD:
The registry is populated and updated by various sources. Tennessee Vital Rrecords provides births and deaths, Blue Cross provides data both new and updates on TennCare patients, the Social Security Administration provides an extract that is used to add social security numbers not already on file. To address the duplicate issue the Office of Information Technology has developed a 3 tier process to identify and minimize duplicates within the immunization registry. The beginning phase is completely automatic and the remaining phases each require a little more manuual intervention.

RESULT:
Using the deduplication routine true duplicates will be more easily identified and reconciled, probable duplicates will be more easily identified thus eliminating the merging of records in error.
The users will have a cleaner and more accurate database to use. This creates a confidence in the system and stimulates more use by all providers.

CONCLUSION:
Although the database will never be completely free of duplicates, use of the deduplication routine will keep the number of duplicates in the system at a minimum.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Duplicates within a immunization registry can be kept to a minimum with careful attention and a good deduplication routine.