Introduction: The medical and public health communities advocate immunization registries as one tool to achieve national immunization goals. Although substantial resources have been expended to establish registries across the nation, minimal research has been conducted to evaluate provider participation costs.
Methods: The objective of this study was to identify the direct costs to participate in an immunization registry. To estimate labor and equipment costs, we conducted interviews and direct observation at four sites that were participating in one of two immunization registries. We calculated mean data-entry times from direct observation of clinic personnel.
Results: The annual cost of participating in a registry varied extremely, ranging from $6083 to $24,246, with the annual cost per patient ranging from $0.65 to $7. 74. Annual per-patient costs were lowest in the site that used an automated data-entry interface. Of the sites requiring a separate data-entry step, costs were lowest for the site participating in the registry that provided more intensive training and had a higher proportion of the target population entered into the registry.
Conclusions: Ease of registry interface, data-entry times, and target population coverage affect provider participation costs. Designing the registry to accept electronic transfers of records and to avoid duplicative data-entry tasks may decrease provider costs.