Vaccination tracking: How do we get those numbers?

Several people have asked where our COVID -19 vaccination data comes from, so we’re sharing some insight into the process.

Oregon Immunization Program’s ALERT Immunization Information System, or ALERT IIS, is a computerized statewide immunization information system or registry. It collects immunization data from both the public and private health care sectors and combines it into a single complete record for each person in Oregon. This helps health care providers, parents and individuals to keep track of immunization status, even if those immunizations were given by more than one provider.

The Oregon Health Authority uses ALERT IIS data for its reports, including for COVID immunizations:

Through Epic, Asante pulls information every 24 hours from the ALERT IIS database into a patient’s medical record. Patients may have an “unknown” vaccine status in their records because ALERT IIS does not have any record that the patient received a COVID-19 vaccination.

Asante does routine spot checks to understand the integrity of the data being pulled. If the patient’s record shows no vaccination, but the patient or family attests that the patient was indeed vaccinated, we can place that information into the system. This happens less than 1% of the time.