Vaccines (but not THAT kind of vaccine thread)

[shinyhappypeople]

This is part vent (ok, a lot jawm vent) and part request for advice.

 

So... I'm trying to enroll younger DD in a homeschool charter program (public school rules apply).  We're in CA so I have to show proof that she's had the required vaccines (she has).  I can't find the stupid vaccine card anywhere AND her pediatrician retired about 5 or 6 years ago. I don't know if he sold his practice.  The local medical society hasn't responded to my request for help.  

 

At this point our only option is to have her re-vaccinated to jump through this stupid bureaucratic hoop.

 

Normally the clinic she's assigned to will schedule a nurse visit  quickly for vaccines, but she's due for her "well child" visit and they refuse to give her any vaccines until the well-child visit.  The soonest well-child appointment is January.

 

There has to be another option.  I'm SO frustrated right now.  Oh wait, we could go through the health department and sit in the waiting room for up to 4 hours a visit (no appointments).  So, yeah, there's that.  Because I have nothing better to do.

 

Also, how long will it take to get her through all the required shots (that she's already had... but I can't prove it...   :cursing: )

 

Maybe this is just a sign that she needs to stay independently homeschooled.  But if she goes to private high school in a few years we'll have to re-visit this issue, so might as well deal with it now.

 

:banghead: 

 

I have a very low tolerance for this kind of meaningless bureaucratic garbage.  Remember, this is a HOMESCHOOL charter.  She wouldn't be doing on-site classes, just online classes and learning at HOME.

 

[Miss Tick]

I hear your pain. I spent 45 minutes going through paperwork with a nurse once because since they are TWINS their vaccine records should be identical. I was surprised she had the guts to disagree with my assertion since clearly I would have been involved in any decision otherwise. A much smaller taste of the hassle you are dealing with.

 

Isn't there a test that can be done for some vaccines to show that your dd had immunity already? Might not save you anything in the end, though.

[smstjohn]

Is there any chance this might contain the information you need?

 

http://cairweb.org/wheres-my-immunization-record/

 

It says it doesn't have every immunization record, but I like finding things from my home when I can instead of waiting in lines somewhere.

[MysteryJen]

All of my children's vaccination records disappeared with the closure of a practice. It was during the early days of transition to electronic records, and no one seems to have any idea where they are. When dd2 headed to high school, they would not believe me that she had her shots and would not re-vaccinate either. So I just filled out the personal belief exemption form for her and same with ds3. Ds1 was 17 and with a different practice and they just updated all his shots. Dd1 (like dd2- Kaiser) could not get a vaccination record, nor would they re-vaccinate, so I paid for titers. Not cheap, but proof of her vaccinated status. That paperwork was accepted by the university without a murmur.

Pain in the neck and expensive. And I get dark warnings from the school district about unvaccinated children.

[shinyhappypeople]

I wish it was still legal to file a "Personal Belief Exemption," as in "it is my personal belief that re-vaccinating my child is pointless when I know she's been vaccinated and is no threat to anyone."

[MarinesWife]

If she doesn't attend any classes in a classroom setting she does not need proof of vaccinations.

[City Mouse]

If she doesn't attend any classes in a classroom setting she does not need proof of vaccinations.

That is not true in many places. In most states if the student is enrolled in public school in any form (even public school at home such as a home school charter or a virtual charter school) they are required to have the same documentation as any public school student. Edited October 20, 2016 by City Mouse

[shinyhappypeople]

First, check and see if he sold his practice.  If he did, rather than just totally shut it down, the new practice may still have her records.

 

Second, check with the health department and see if they keep a digital database.  Our state has a digital database of when your kid gets vaccines.  We initially had to opt in, but now any time I go to the doc or to the school or the ER or whatever, they can access the database right there and check on the vaccines. 

How do I do this?  The local medical society hasn't responded to my plea for help.  I'm not sure who else would have this information.

[City Mouse]

Try to google your state and "immunization registry"

[FaithManor]

Due to the state's desire to track vaccination rates, it is likely that your county health department can help you find the practice. By law medical records cannot just be dumped. Physicians who retire or close their practices are required to have an estate manager - sometimes this is medical attorney, sometimes a medical secretary or other qualified individual - who must maintain records for seven years, in some states it is longer than that. Someone likely has her records. If he sold his practice, the medical records would become the property of the new doctor, and again that individual is not allowed to just get rid of records for patients he or she is not seeing. That would be detrimental to everyone's continuity of care and health. Someone out there has her records.

[Janeway]

That happened here but we are in Texas so I signed a waiver of conscience. I am guessing that is not available in your state? Did you check with her current ped to see if they have the old records? I would not re-give all those shots.

[Melissa B]

This happened to us when our doctor in another city closed his office and it hadn't occurred to me to transfer the records when we moved (until I actually needed them.) Two of my kids are completely double vaccinated. 

 

I was able to get their vaccinations at the county health department - same day, no appointment necessary, and free.

[mamakelly]

I know that San Diego has a vaccine registry (it may be California wide). We are delayed vaccinators. When I went in to have my dd start vaccinations they flagged her chart because "the registry" said she had been vaccinated yesterday, which obviously turned out to be a mistake. So there is some sort of registry. I'd start with the health dept.

 

FWIW- all the homeschool charters here will accept non vaccinated kids, but they aren't allowed to take any onsite classes.

[Farrar]

I agree that most of the time the records are transferred. When our doctor retired, we got a letter telling us what new practice the records were transferred to and were invited to become patients there or have the records transferred elsewhere. Do you know anyone else who had that pediatrician? Maybe they'd remember if that happened.

[bettyandbob]

In 1974, my pediatrician decided to go back to Cuba. Weirdest thing. He defect and then returned.

 

My siblings and I had been fully vaccinated. My mom spent the rest of our childhoods scribbling about the doctor going to Cuba and leaving no records.

 

In college there was an outbreak of measles on college campuses across the country. I forget if they found the vector, but the spread picked up steam through spring break. My college pulled everyone's records and gave vaccinations to everyone who didn't have proof.

[SparklyUnicorn]

My husband went through something similar.  He had to have certain vaccines (and a physical) to become a legal resident.  He could not get his vaccine records and at the time vaccines weren't required.  So he ended up having to have a lot of them again and all at once.  He wasn't too thrilled, but he had no problems as a result.

 

 

[SebastianCat]

I had titters drawn before college to prove I had immunity to one of the childhood diseases for which I had received a vaccine a few days before the birthday in which it was due. Totally bogus, but the university wouldn't accept me without proof of immunity because my shot was given too early.

[Ravin]

I just sign an exemption form for my kids, for all vaccines even though they are immunized. AZ allows philosophical exemptions, and it's my philosophy that health care is not the school's job. If/when there is an outbreak for which I need to provide immunization information to keep a kid in school/program, I will.

 

Another option might be to have titers done which show immunization. I did this for myself for university admission and when expecting DD, rather than getting an unneeded immunization because I didn't have the record (from my military health record) which showed I'd been immunized against everything.

[MarinesWife]

That is not true in many places. In most states if the student is enrolled in public school in any form (even public school at home such as a home school charter or a virtual charter school) they are required to have the same documentation as any public school student.

She said she is in CA and it is true here. I live here. my kids are enrolled through a charter school. They have no vaccinations.

[Alice]

Thoughts: 

1) You could ask for titers to prove immunity. You can't do that for everything but it can be done for many. Since you have no records, it would mean one blood draw vs. a lot of shots to revaccinate her. Your doc can order those and then those can satisfy the school. 

 

2) Her new doctor should be able to access whatever database California has. It's unlikely her baby shots are on there but the more recent ones might be. 

 

3) You may have already done this...but I would call your doctor back and ask to speak to one of the doctors in charge of the practice and not a nurse. I'd explain again the situation and ask for an appointment before Jan. There are a lot of options other than doing a quick nurse visit or doing a WCC in January.

 

I can understand why they might not want to do a quick nurse visit, we used to do that for things like shots for travel or people who were vaccinating on an alternative schedule. But we found that really frequently people would come in for the nurse visit and then have a list of questions that they wanted to ask the doctor about and ask "just to see the doctor for a minute". That quick nurse visit then turned into a longer doctor visit. If you do that multiple times a day the rest of the doctor's schedule is now a mess and people who had appointments are made to wait. I'm not saying you would do that but sometimes office policies are made based on people who cause problems which is a pain for everyone else. 

 

However,  you can ask for it to be a doctor visit for shots where you are on the schedule to see the doc and they do a quick exam to make sure she is healthy that day and then they start re-vacccinating. 

 

The doctor in charge also has the ability to add in a WCC before January and could do that if they are going to insist that she have one. 

 

4) You said "the clinic she is assigned to" so I'm not sure what your options are for changing to a different clinic. That could be an option, in particular if you have a family doc that the rest of you see they might be able to do some of the vaccines. 

 

5) The medical records should still be out there. You can call the State Medical Association to see if they can help track them down...for California the number is  (800) 786-4262. 

You could call the American Academy of Pediatrics and see if they can help track the doc down and what happened to his practice...800/433-9016. 

More time consuming (perhaps) would be to call other pediatricians in your area and ask them if they took over his practice "Hi, I was a patient of Dr. X and I am trying to locate our medical records. Did you take over his practice?" When a doctor retires or leaves it's considered medical abandonment if they don't have some way of transferring records and patient care so he should have done that somehow. 

[Lang Syne Boardie]

I hope the records can be found. Our old family doctor's office BURNED old records, rather than comply with the law and enter archived vax info in the new state database! And they were so criminally lazy about it that they counted families who hadn't been seen in just one year as "former patients."

 

I had my older boys' vax records, but my problem was that new family medical practices didn't want to believe they were valid because they weren't in the database. Finally, I found a new doctor, who was accepting new patients, who had the sense to believe I wouldn't have been able to forge the records myself (and had no motivation to do so, either), and he entered our info into the state database for me. So now we're "real."

 

I would not revaccinate. I believe that vaccines are mostly beneficial and mostly safe, but bad batches and reactions can happen. On principle, I do not give my children unneeded medication, just to please a bureaucracy. I feel strongly enough about this that I would consider moving to a state that would allow a combination of titer checks and exemptions.

[Katy]

Call your county health department and ask for vaccination records.  I'm not positive, but I think there are vaccine registries in every state because of federal funding issues.

[SparklyUnicorn]

The stupid thing with titers is not all insurance companies will pay for them (mine won't), but they will usually pay for the vaccines. 

[Katy]

Also, while we believe in delayed vaccines in our house (due to a family history of febrile seizures), the toxins in them aren't that bad.  I once heard a doctor venting about this saying there was more mercury in a can of corn-syrup sweetened soda than there is an any ten vaccines.  I never looked the statistics up, but I have heard previously that the soldier (sp?) in pipes in corn syrup manufacturers does leach mercury into corn syrup, so I don't find it farfetched.

 

But anyway, your county health department SHOULD have a registry.  If something isn't recorded properly it won't hurt to catch up.  You can probably do it for free through the nurse at the county health department over just 1-3 appointments, far before January.

[shinyhappypeople]

She said she is in CA and it is true here. I live here. my kids are enrolled through a charter school. They have no vaccinations.

 

The rules may vary by charter.  I know what I'm dealing with.

[rjand6more]

Did you have health insurance at the time?  Can you search EOBs by contacting the company?

 

It's true that offices are required to save records.  They are somewhere.  In my state, I would contact the Health Professions Bureau.  All practitioners have to make arrangements for their records to be held, physically or electronically.

[ktgrok]

have you checked the old pediatrician's website? There might be info on there as to what happened to the practice. 

[rose]

I would check your states laws regarding how long doctors are supposed to keep medical records around for. In Canada doctors are supposed to keep files archived for seven years, even after they retire. I would imagine that there are similar laws in the US and probably those records are accessible somewhere.

[Nart]

She said she is in CA and it is true here. I live here. my kids are enrolled through a charter school. They have no vaccinations.

Your kids are probably grandfathered into the old requirements that allowed personal exemptions. All new students entering CA public schools, kindergartners, and 7th graders fall into the new rules. So when one of your kids enters 7th grade you will will either have to get them vaccinated or get a medical exemption if you want to keep them enrolled in a public charter. Edited October 21, 2016 by Nart

[kitten18]

Your kids are probably grandfathered into the old requirements that allowed personal exemptions. All new students entering CA public schools, kindergartners, and 7th graders fall into the new rules. So when one of your kids enters 7th grade you will will either have to get them vaccinated or get a medical exemption if you want to keep them enrolled in a public charter.

I don't know of any Independent Study Charter in So CA that requires proof of vaccination for enrollment. And only one that requires it for onsite classes.

 

 

My dd entered 7th grade this year. She's fully vaccinated but I have never given a vaccine record to the charter.

Edited October 21, 2016 by kitten18

[shinyhappypeople]

I don't know of any Independent Study Charter in So CA that requires proof of vaccination for enrollment. And only one that requires it for onsite classes.

 

 

My dd entered 7th grade this year. She's fully vaccinated but I have never given a vaccine record to the charter.

 

It's great that you've been able to avoid this bureaucratic hoop.  This is not what I'm dealing with with the specific charter we're considering.  

[kitten18]

It's great that you've been able to avoid this bureaucratic hoop. This is not what I'm dealing with with the specific charter we're considering.

Yes, I was responding to Nart.

[Amber in SJ]

I have been in this situation.  Our public charter school in California last year began requiring immunization records for K, 7th & 9th last year..  We have been with this charter for 8 years and have always signed the personal exemption.  Regardless of the fact that I have been with the charter school for so long, regardless of the fact that our charter does not offer any "on-siite" classes, or any other reason if I didn't produce proof of immunization they would not continue to enroll our kids.  Our pediatrician had retired and we had changed insurances & medical practices completely, and no one, including me, seemed to be able to produce any kind of record of their immunizations.  We made the before school appt for our 7th grader & because we were willing to get her the boosters normal at this age her new doctor was willing to send the charter school a letter to be added to her file stating that she had been immunized at their office for X, Y & Z.  It was all a PITA, but done.  I am going to look into one of those databases because we will have to go through this next year when the next kid goes into the 7th grade *sigh*

 

Amber in SJ

[sassenach]

I'm in the same position. I need to track down dd's record, which only made it in partial form when we transferred her records. Our charter only requires vaccinations for kids who take classes. So I signed the stupid paper and she can't do classes, which is fine for now. However, she's going to India next summer so we have to sort this out one way or another. I might see if they'll draw titers.

[sassenach]

She said she is in CA and it is true here. I live here. my kids are enrolled through a charter school. They have no vaccinations.

California charters are in a weird gray zone with the roll out of the new law. Currently, home charters can interpret the law in either direction. Some require vaccinations and some don't.

[idnib]

Is the pediatrician's old office close enough for you to drive by? If not, can you Google the address and see what's there now, then call them and ask if they know what happened to the practice? Did you ever need to take your daughter to a specialist who requested the pediatrician's records and might have a copy?