MICHIGAN - The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has implemented a new method to better report vaccination data on its COVID-19 dashboard.
Margo Bowman is the director of clinical pharmacy services for Spectrum Health, who is in charge of all vaccine inventory for Spectrum Health clinics across West Michigan, and she reports all supply and distribution documentation through an electronic health record.
"That relays it directly to the state through a site called MCIR, and that provides updated information based on our inventory and based on the administrations that we give at west Michigan vaccine clinic or any of our other clinics to be able to update the state exactly where we are, and so every single dose is tallied in, tallied out, and we keep track of that on a regular basis," says Bowman.
"The new dashboard is wonderful for the general population to be able to look at it has a lot of the good information, you can see exactly where vaccines have been distributed, where most people are getting vaccinated," says Bowman
"That relays it directly to the state through a site called Micker, and that provides updated information based on our inventory and based on the administrations that we give at west Michigan vax clinic or any of our other clinics to be able to update the state exactly where we are, and so every single dose it tallied in, tallied out and we keep track of that on a regular basis."
According to a press release from MDHHS, starting Wednesday, April 14, the dashboard will now reflect the following improvements:
- Show the date the vaccine(s) are delivered to providers.
This makes it easier to understand where vaccines are located and how quickly they are being administered.
- Show the number of doses delivered by both state providers and federal programs within the state (previously the data showed only the deliveries from the state’s allocations).
Users of the dashboard will see the date, quantity and location of all doses delivered to state-enrolled partners and federal program participants.
Data can be filtered by state and federal distribution.
- The number of doses administered will look slightly different.
An improved deduplication method will show a more accurate description of the number of first and second doses administered.
The updated dataset will also include more precise address information, which may cause a variation in total number of doses administered within each county, local health department jurisdiction and preparedness region.
According to Bowman, there is going to be a slight delay in data getting updated, so the numbers could fluctuate throughout the days and even weeks depending on the number of patients and electronic health records.
"So that could make some of those delays where you might not see all 12,00 people that get vaccinated on a single day, the next day or even that night ad so if it takes a little bit of time, don't worry, don't fret we're doing the best that we can to make sure that everything is as accurate as possible for us to be able to look at the data holistically," Bowman says.
This week the Kaiser Family Foundation analyzed data on covid-19 vaccinations based on race. According the KFF, of the people vaccinated in Michigan, 79 percent are White, 8 percent are Black, 3 percent are Hispanic, and 3 percent are Asian.
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