Becoming Part of a Statewide Registry: Programmatic Challenges and Triumphs of a Software Transition

Background: VaxTrack Immunization Registry has been serving eligible providers for more than ten years. In July 2009, VaxTrack joined the California Immunization Registry (CAIR) as part of the move to create a single, statewide IIS.  At the time of the transition, VaxTrack had more than 800 participating providers, almost 4900 users, over 1.2 million records and more than 7.6 million immunizations. 

Setting: Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, CA

Population: Enrolled and eligible providers in the two-county region.

Project Description: Most activities related to the transition of VaxTrack to CAIR occurred in the six months before the “go live” date.  Staff continued to recruit and train new providers in order to meet grant-based performance targets.  These targets were incorporated into staff-specific work plans.  Since all program activities had to continue, transition and programmatic tasks were reviewed to determine which could be streamlined or delegated.  Health Plan partners assisted with transition marketing and some existing operating procedures were changed or reprioritized.  New business rules were introduced and others adapted to address differences associated with software structure.  As testing gave way to working with the live data, some procedure modifications were required. To deal with the volume of providers and users involved in the transition, staff shifted from a decentralized to a centralized training model, with a focus on high volume and newly enrolled providers. The goal was to have all high-volume providers trained before go-live, then shift focus to training read-only providers, re-engaging inactive providers, and returning to “business as usual.” However, on-going training efforts have remained the main focus of staff.

Results/Lessons Learned: A solid work plan is critical to the success of any transition.  Because activities related to grant-based performance targets were incorporated into the transition work plan, staff successfully met and surpassed them.  From a programmatic standpoint, however, the process of transitioning from one registry software to another continues long after the “go live” date has passed and the technical activities are completed.    A post-transition, or business continuity, work plan helps staff achieve balance between remaining transition activities while resuming routine program activities.