COMPUTER COULD TRACK CHILDHOOD VACCINATIONS.

Byline: Kermit Pattison Daily News Staff Writer

Aiming at diseases like measles, mumps and whooping cough, Ventura County plans to install a computerized tracking system to ensure children get immunizations.

The proposal by county health officials would create an ambitious system linking all Ventura County's private and public clinics and tracking all its children.

"If children are properly immunized, they will have healthy lives and so will the rest of the community," said Dr. Gary Feldman, Ventura County public health officer.

The immunization registry and recall system would keep track of every child in the county and even issue reminders to parents when kids are overdue for shots.

Medical offices would update the computer records when kids come in for appointments. The program also will have a phone and fax system for outlying clinics not hooked up to the computer.

The system can automatically phone parents and play a prerecorded message reminding them their kids are overdue for immunization, and it can send out reminders by mail.

In addition, the system can track immunization rates, giving public health officials valuable data that will help them target health efforts. It has been touted as a valuable tool to ensure kids get required shots before enrolling in school.

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors will review the proposal Tuesday.

The system will begin with the Ventura County Medical Center clinics and county public health programs. Then it will expand to include private pediatric and family care clinics.

Dr. Chris Landon, director of the Conejo Valley Family Care Center, said the service would give clinics instant access to immunization records even when parents lose the paper records or change doctors.

"There are places around the United States where this works pretty well," Landon said. "Right now, it's fairly cutting edge."

Feldman said the system will add about 13,000 children each year from all income levels from both public and private providers.

Officials are optimistic that the system will reduce the number of children who fail to get immunized for diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, polio and whooping cough.

Health officials estimate only about 60 percent of Ventura County children are properly immunized by age 2.

The vulnerability was driven home last year when a measles epidemic struck Ventura County. The county had 74 cases before the epidemic was declared over in June.

"It certainly reinforced my desire to do it," Feldman said. "The epidemic was a direct result not of vaccine failure but of failure to vaccinate."

Feldman said the county has been trying to start such a system for about two years. The state Department of Health Services has awarded the county a two-year grant of $720,000 to launch the immunization registry and recall system.

The Department of Health Services has funded 16 such programs around California. The program is still relatively new, and health departments are still figuring out how to coordinate it, said Dr. Loring Dales, a medical epidemiologist with the Department of Health Services.

"This has been done in Great Britain, and it had a dramatic influence on raising immunization levels by 30 or 40 percent," he said.

Although the state has provided funding for only two years, Feldman said he expected the grant to renew.

"I think it's extremely likely," he said. "We're betting on it."