BACKGROUND:
There has been a significant decline in vaccine preventable diseases in the twentieth century thereby reducing child and infant mortality and morbidity. Vaccines however are extremely fragile biological products and their proper transport and storage is critical for efficacy. The New York State Vaccines for Children (VFC) program provides vaccines free of charge for Medicaid enrolled, underinsured and uninsured children. Public health representatives document their findings about VFC vaccines including storage and handling on provider visit questionnaires.

OBJECTIVE:
1. To conduct a comprehensive and extensive analysis of provider visit questionnaires in the three databases at the New York State Department of Health Immunization Program.
2. To understand compliance levels related to vaccine handling and storage.

METHOD:
The different provider visit questionnaires covered different periods of time (time range: 9/94- 6/03). Questions related to vaccine storage and handling were converted to an MS-Excel format and analyzed for compliance levels. In addition, a list of common questions in the three questionnaires was compiled. Visits to provider offices with public health representatives also yielded important information on practices related to storage and handling.

RESULT:
Compliance with established storage and handling procedures was broad and ranged from 10-95%. For the most recent questionnaire from CDC, required procedures had compliance levels ranging from 78%-88%, the only strongly recommended procedure had a compliance level of 55% and recommended procedures had compliance levels of 11-80%.

CONCLUSION:
Analysis of provider visit questionnaires yielded information that could help the state to track performance with respect to storage and handling by providers and reveal deficiencies in compliance to procedures that need to be addressed.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. This was a pilot analysis and gives information on provider compliance to vaccine storage and handling.
2. Provider compliance is not at desirable levels and needs to be addressed.