California Health eQuality Project Summary
Immunization Gateway
January 2014
PROBLEM
Thousands of providers in California who are currently participating in the Medicare and Medicaid
EHR Incentive Programs must attest to “meaningful use” (MU) of their EHR in the years ahead. To
meet their MU requirement for public health reporting, a more efficient and automated process was
needed to facilitate submitting and processing immunization data to a state registry electronically for
providers in a format compliant with MU criteria, and for the state registry staff.
SOLUTION
CheQ convened work group meetings with immunization stakeholders to discuss requirements and
high-level work flows for the immunization reporting process. Based on the work group’s findings, a
new Immunization Messaging Portal (IMP) that streamlines enrollment and automates ongoing
submission of immunization data for data exchange providers and organizations in the seven
regions of CA was developed. The Portal replaces the former manual process for registering, testing
and submitting immunization data, and provides a scalable means for accepting data in compliance
with the technical standards for Meaningful Use. The developed IMP system consists of three
components:
1. a Registration and Administration Portal that providers may use to register their intent to
submit immunization data and that state immunization registry staff may use to administer
other IMP functions;
2. a Validation and Test Service that helps automate validation that a provider is sending a
message in compliance with MU and state requirements; and
3. a Routing Service that accepts immunization data from providers and routes it to the
appropriate regional registry.
California Health eQuality Project Summary
Immunization Gateway
January 2014
RATIONALE FOR SOLUTION
The IMP was developed to increase capacity of public health entities to receive immunization data in
a manner compliant with Meaningful Use, and to prepare for a statewide immunization registry and
create a technology and policy platform to fill other public health reporting needs.
OUTCOME AND NEXT STEPS
The IMP was deployed and implemented in the public health data center and helped to increase the
number of entities that submit immunization data electronically in a manner compliant with
Meaningful Use. It also reduced processing time of validating submitted data.
The technology platform of IMP is now being leveraged to support other public health reporting
needs. For example, portions of the Registration and Administration Portal are now being use to
allow providers to register their intent to submit public health reports for data types beyond
immunizations. We anticipate that portions of IMP may be adopted as part of CAIR 2.0 as the state
modernizes the immunization registry, and that portions of the Validation and Test service and/or
the Routing Service may be reused for other public health reporting services.
BENEFIT
The IMP enables providers participating in the Medicare or Medi-Cal EHR Incentive Program to meet
ongoing meaningful use requirements for public health reporting in the years ahead without the need
to apply for waivers. It also facilitates the registration process for providers not currently reporting
immunization data to the state but wishing to do so. In addition, it increases the productivity and
maintainability of reporting process with limited public health resources.