Really It Seems no One At The ADHA Or The Department Of Health Can Organise Even The Simplest Register Amidst All Sorts Of Failures. What A Dog’s Breakfast!

This appeared last week:

Failure to transfer GP data blamed for vax record holes

Researchers say the national register data is not up-to-date for 14% of children

Jocelyn Wright

13th December 2018

More than one in 10 children are incorrectly identified as overdue for a vaccine when in fact they’re up-to-date, according to a national audit. 

And in many cases, problems with transferring vaccination records from GP software to the Australian Immunisation Register appear to be behind the errors — which can have far-reaching consequences for children and parents.

Researchers from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) examined the accuracy of 905 children’s records randomly selected from the register, which said the children were overdue for specific vaccines at one, two and five years of age.

The report — the first of its kind since 2001 — found 86% of the children were truly overdue and needed catch-up doses.

However, 14% of children listed as overdue were actually up-to-date, in direct contradiction to their records.

The most common reason for a mistake was a failure to transfer the record of vaccination from practice management software to the register, occurring in 58% of cases where an error was found, the report said.

Other common issues were problems with duplicate records or glitches with the online register. 

Accuracy was key given that a child’s up-to-date status could be linked to school enrolment, childcare subsidies and government assistance, report co-author Dr Frank Beard said.

Discrepancies between the immunisation register and true vaccination status varied widely by state, with just 3% of records in Victoria proving to be inaccurate, compared with 29% in NSW.

“The higher accuracy of data in Victoria could be due to the strict 'no jab, no play' legislative requirements for enrolment in childcare in that state,” Dr Beard said.

The authors called on the Department of Health to develop educational materials for healthcare professionals in order to reduce data errors.

They also recommended the department should "consider ways to reduce failure of data transfer via practice management software".

A second NCIRS report released at the same time found the proportion of children fully immunised in Australia in December 2017 reached 93.8% at 12 months of age and 94.5% at age five.

But the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA) says user errors and not issues with the software are to blame for the errors.

“This is a classic case where by working together we can fix the problem - it can’t be solved by the Government in isolation,” a spokeswoman for the MSIA said.

Comments from the RACGP are found here:

https://www.australiandoctor.com.au/news/failure-transfer-gp-data-blamed-vax-record-holes

Here is a link to the researchers at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance.

http://www.kidsresearch.org.au/research/infectious-disease-and-immunity/national-centre-immunisation-research-and-surveillance

Here is the link to the report:

http://www.ncirs.org.au/sites/default/files/2018-12/2018%20AIR%20data%20tranfer%20report_FINAL_0.pdf

The authors summarise the situation thus:

“Australian Immunisation Register Data Transfer Study

2018
This study represents the first attempt to systematically audit the accuracy of AIR data at the national level since 2001. Of the 905 records included in the final analysis, 86% were assessed as accurate (truly overdue) and 14% as inaccurate (i.e. the child appeared overdue despite being actually up to date for the relevant antigen). The error rate ranged from 3% in Victoria to 29% in New South Wales.”

Reading the actual report it is clear there are some Patient Management System to the AIR issues but there are also a legion of issues with paper based transfers from local council clinics and so on.

The error rates vary so widely one can only conclude that this is mostly resulting from system mismanagement that should not be happening with something as important as tracking and delivering vaccines to our children

The whole system needs a forceful curative ‘boot in the bum’ It is a genuine 'omnishambles"

David.