After your clinic completes the onboarding process for electronic reporting to CT WiZ at the CT Department of Public Health (CT DPH) Immunization Program as outlined in the overview of the CT WiZ electronic reporting process, for your clinic to meet compliance with the State law to electronically report all vaccinations administered (publicly supplied and privately purchased for all ages) to CT WiZ, please see below.
Once my clinic receives my final notification email from CT DPH that my onboarding process is complete the next steps for my clinic will be outlined as below:
- Add Vaccines to Inventory: Primary or backup vaccine coordinator should add vaccines to the inventory on hand screen in CT WiZ for privately purchased vaccines. (Publicly supplied vaccines, such as from CVP, are added after you place your order, and it is accepted into inventory on hand.) Once this is added, please report all vaccinations into CT WiZ. This will help ensure patients have complete vaccination records in CT WiZ.
- CT WiZ Trainings: Please review your email notification from CT DPH for training instructions. Providers should also continue to visit our website for the latest step by step guides, videos and report manuals. If you need additional assistance, please submit a help desk ticket.
- Update Clinic Information, as needed: If staff change at any time in your clinic, your primary or backup vaccine coordinator should make the updates to the clinic information section in CT WiZ. This will ensure that all current staff have access who need it, and anyone who no longer works at your clinic who have access get inactivated for security purposes.
- Provide the CT WiZ Notice to Patients and Report All Vaccinations in CT WiZ: When your clinic is reporting electronically to CT WiZ, providers must provide the Notice to Patients About Reporting to CT WiZ that notifies patients of their enrollment into CT WiZ. Patients are automatically enrolled in CT WiZ. Only if a patient chooses to opt out, then the patient must send a letter with their signed permission to the CT DPH requesting their vaccination record no longer be maintained in CT WiZ. Only CT DPH has the permissions and authority to update a patient status to opt-out. Patients may opt back in by submitting the request to CT DPH. As a reminder, providers will not violate HIPAA when reporting to CT WiZ as it is required by law and under public health activities. Additionally, it is to the benefit of patients, providers, and public health to capture all vaccinations in CT WiZ especially as patients see more than one provider across their lifespan. The national Healthy People 2030 objective is to increase the proportion of Immunization Information Systems, such as CT WiZ, that track adult immunizations across the lifespan. In CT WiZ, currently only about 1% of patients opt out. For patients enrolled in CT WiZ and vaccinated in Connecticut, they can securely access their own or their child’s vaccination record from the CT WiZ Public Portal.
- Review communications from CT DPH: To ensure data quality review secure notifications from the CT DPH. To stay current with immunization updates, the webpage is a helpful go-to-source for information, visit: https://portal.ct.gov/immunization/