Supporters of a statewide vaccine registry in Massachusetts are restoring efforts to lobby state lawmakers for financial support of the centralized system, according to a Boston Globe report.
Supporters say a statewide vaccine registry would help healthcare providers and patients keep track of who has received critical vaccinations and when they are due for subsequent ones. Massachusetts is one of the last states in the country to enact a statewide vaccine registry.
Last year, lawmakers in Massachusetts passed legislation that would set up a statewide vaccine registry but failed to proceed with a proposal that would assess a fee on healthcare payors, which would raise $1 million-$2 million for operating the registry. Healthcare insurers have long opposed the fee assessment but recently backed down.
Without payors serving as an obstacle, supporters of the vaccine registry are pushing for the fee assessment again, which would be used to fund the vaccine registry. The registry, which was without state funding last year, went into a federally funded pilot program that is expected to be complete at the end of this year.
State officials hope to roll out the vaccine registry across the state by 2012.
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Supporters say a statewide vaccine registry would help healthcare providers and patients keep track of who has received critical vaccinations and when they are due for subsequent ones. Massachusetts is one of the last states in the country to enact a statewide vaccine registry.
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Last year, lawmakers in Massachusetts passed legislation that would set up a statewide vaccine registry but failed to proceed with a proposal that would assess a fee on healthcare payors, which would raise $1 million-$2 million for operating the registry. Healthcare insurers have long opposed the fee assessment but recently backed down.
Without payors serving as an obstacle, supporters of the vaccine registry are pushing for the fee assessment again, which would be used to fund the vaccine registry. The registry, which was without state funding last year, went into a federally funded pilot program that is expected to be complete at the end of this year.
State officials hope to roll out the vaccine registry across the state by 2012.
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