A new computerized tracking system will soon be online to make sure every Michigan 2-year-old is up to date on shots. And Hannah's record - complete with a chicken pox vaccination - was used to demonstrate how the system works
"We've made more progress on this registry in the past year than some states have made in five years," Gov. John Engler - Hannah's dad - told health officials yesterday in East Lansing. "No other state is going to have what Michigan is going to have."
The Michigan Childhood Immunization Registry will connect regional databases containing vaccination histories for young children in each area. The registry will allow physicians and parents to find out quickly which shots a child has had and if he or she is due for any others.
Parents can choose to keep their children out of the registry.
The state set up the registry after it came in last in the nation in a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of immunization rats for children 19 to 35 months old.
The state's rate now is 74.1 percent, up 13 percentage points from 1994 and enough to put it ahead of Nevada, Utah and Idaho, although it is still below the national average of 75 percent.
Michigan's rise in immunizations will allow the state to receive more than $450,000 in incentives, federal officials said. They estimated Michigan may have missed out on more than $1 million by failing to qualify for the payments.
because of its previous record. Engler said the goal remains to vaccinate all young children for diphtheria, tetanus, prtussis, polio and measles. "We've just to keep at it," he told health officials.
He then presented awards to five local health departments and one health maintenance organization that have immunized at least 90 percent of their 2-year olds.
They included NorthMed HMO in Traverse City, and local health departments in the Barry-Eaton District, Branch-Hillsdale-St. Joseph District, Delta-Menominee District, Ingham County and Mecosta County.
The new computerized registry was demonstrated by David Johnson, chief medical executive of the Michigan Department of Community Health Public Health Agency.
He said southeastern Michigan - including the counties of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Monroe, Washtenaw, Livingston and St. Clair - will go online with the system April 1. The other four areas of the state will be added in the following months.
Michigan's registry will be the first in the nation that will be accessible to all public and private health care providers, Engler said. Records will be kept for all children born on or after Jan. 1, 1994.
Health care providers will be able to call up the information on their computer by connecting to the database with a modem, or may call and ask that a youngster's written record be faxed or mailed to them.
Johnson said computerized vaccination records kept by local health departments, the Women's, Infants and Children's program and some health providers will be downloaded into the registry directly.
Other records will have to be brought up-to-date by private providers, who can either type in the information on a computer or send completed forms to local health departments.
The registry will be updated whenever health care providers report immunizations to the Department of Community Health, as they are required to do under the new law. An individual's record will be purged once he or she turns 20.