WORKING WITH MANAGED CARE ORGANIZATIONS TO BUILD POPULATION-BASED IMMUNIZATION REGISTRIES

Managed care organizations (MCOs) and their provider networks are emer ging as a primary organizational model for the provision of health ins urance and the delivery of health care services. MCOs have unique need s for health care data and large data sets that they collect on their current patient population, which make them ideal partners for buildin g large-scale, population-based immunization registries. As patients m ove between plans, the lack of continuous patient data makes it diffic ult for MCOs to document provider performance on a number of key indic ators, including immunization. MCOs are being required at the state an d national levels to demonstrate performance. This makes these organiz ations highly motivated to participate in efforts to build a common da ta base that can be shared among providers as well as MCOs. This also presents the challenge and need for public health-based immunization r egistries. Public health organizations implementing population-based i mmunization registries are certain to be faced with questions of how M COs will be able to contribute to and benefit from such registries. Fo r the Milwaukee and Philadelphia All Kids Count projects, the experien ces of each project's interactions with MCOs are described and compare d here. Conclusions are drawn concerning the ways in which future immu nization registry projects will need to adapt to take advantage of the strong alliances and partnerships which MCOs have frequently offered to public health-managed immunization registries.