I tell our staff that their Employee Health record is separate from our hospital records, so if they would like a copy of their vaccination information to take
to their provider I can give them one. This has been our process for all the vaccines up until the year before last, where they put a box on our vaccination Permit for staff to check if they were a patient of our clinic providers, and then we would copy their
record to put into the EMR. Once we bought our Agility software, or Administrator negotiated a cheaper price to not purchase the interface to the state immunization information system, so then we send copies to the clinic she was also entering them into the
state Immunization Information system for us with all the other vaccines our clinic gives, so they can be discoverable by providers if they look for them.
I do see your point, but not all of my staff is in our EMR because they don’t all get care here, and many who were hired brought sufficient medical records to
me upon hire date that I didn’t need to order Employee Health labwork (such as a Quantiferon). At that, when I do order Employee Health labwork, it does not go into their EMR record unless they ask for a copy to give to their doctor.
Tara
From: MCOH-EH [mailto:mcoh-eh-bounces@mylist.net]
On Behalf Of Abhijay Karandikar via MCOH-EH
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2020 8:14 AM
To: MCOH-EH <mcoh-eh@mylist.net>
Cc: Abhijay Karandikar <dr_abhik@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [MCOH-EH] COVID-19 vaccine recordkeeping
Tara,
Thank you for the feedback.
The key question that I have to answer is: Is vaccine information considered "personnel medical record" and therefore be kept separate from the general medical files? If yes, then it should not automatically be transferred to EPIC and kept in a separate EH
EMR. If no, then potentially all vaccine records (MMR, flu, etc.) should be entered in EPIC; why keep them separate in the first place.....
Abhijay
Our clinic is manually entering them into our state information system, because while my employee health does have the capability to send our flu vaccines
to the state system, our Administration did not buy the interface to save some money. Now providers are calling to ask for copies if I am not having our employees entered and scanned by the clinic. Either way did that decision save any money if it is making
more work for the staff who is paid by the hour?
Tara
I wanted to get some insight from all of you to see what OSHA states in terms of keeping personnel medical records separate from general medical records
for vaccines. For those of you who have separate OH EMRs, are you transmitting vaccine (eg. flu vaccine) records to EPIC? Specifically, in case of COVID-19 vaccine, where will you be storing vaccine records?
Our system plans to track administration and record doses, etc. in EPIC. Would it need to be in the OH EMR as well? Is there regulatory guidance on
this?
A Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Abhijay P. Karandikar, MD, MPH, FACOEM
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