Protect Your Significant Investment in Vaccines So That They Can Protect Your Patients
July 2014
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| TECHNICALLY SPEAKING | |
| Protect Your Significant Investment in Vaccines So That They Can Protect Your Patients | |
| Published July 2014 | |
| Information presented in this article may have changed since the original publication date. For the most current immunization recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, visit www.immunize.org/acip/acip_vax.asp. | |
| $8,079 — That’s the total private sector cost for 10 doses of each of the 13 vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for routine use in children from birth through 17 years of age.* | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Since most vaccines are available in 10-dose packages, this means that even small medical practices are storing approximately $8,000 of vaccine at any one time. Of course, the total value of vaccines available in a practice is usually much greater than that, and very large practices may be storing more than 10 times that value in inventory. How can you ensure that your sizeable vaccine investment is appropriately protected from potential loss (and subsequent replacement costs) and that your patients receive viable vaccines? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| To assist with your efforts to properly store and protect your vaccine supply, CDC recently released a wide range of new tools, including: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) also maintains a wide variety of helpful tools in its Clinic Resources: Storage & Handling Web section, such as temperature logs for refrigerators and freezers and the following two recently updated pieces: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| All of these tools provide great information to assist your medical practice with appropriate vaccine storage and handling. Take a minute to have your staff review the tools, and institute recommended policies and systems in your healthcare setting. You will be rewarded with dollars saved from reduced vaccine wastage. But more importantly, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that your efforts have helped ensure that your patients receive effective protection against vaccine preventable diseases — and nothing is more valuable than that! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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