In their special session earlier this week, lawmakers approved a plan to make doctors get most of their child vaccines from the state. WNPR's Jeff Cohen reports.
Currently, doctors who need vaccines for children only have to get them from the state if their patient is on Medicaid. The rest can be bought on the private market. But a new state law will change that -- making it mandatory for doctors to source nearly all of their vaccines from the state.
Anne Foley works for the governor's Office of Policy and Management. She hopes the new immunization rules will increase the state's rates of on-time immunization.
"I know the providers have been saying that we do have a very high vaccination rate here in Connecticut and we do. The one place where we can improve, and we're hopeful that this initiative will make improvements, is in the timely vaccination of children."
A statewide coalition of physicians opposes the move. Three groups -- the Connecticut State Medical Society, the Connecticut Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Connecticut Academy of Family Physicians -- all say that the change is a bad idea. They say it's hard enough to get vaccines delivered on time from the health department as it is and that this new law will only make things worse.
But Foley says the state is working to change that.
Foley: The department had been doing some analysis of how many they thought would be needed by a particular practice, and we're going to move to a different system now in which if the doctors order 500 -- we'll give them 500.
Cohen: So the concerns of, hey, we don't even get what we need now - those should go away?
Foley: Right.
The changes will go into effect in January.
For WNPR, I'm Jeff Cohen.
