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.