COVID-19 Vaccination Program Provider Enrollment: Guidance for Jurisdictions

As part of the COVID-19 vaccination planning process, jurisdictions are responsible for conducting outreach to providers to enroll them in the COVID-19 Vaccination Program. When enrolling providers, jurisdictions must:

• Ensure providers sign CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccination Program Provider Agreement (Section A) and complete the Provider Profile (Section B).
• Ensure providers are enrolled in the immunization information system (IIS).
• Ensure each provider location is entered into CDC’s Vaccine Tracking System (VTrckS).
• Provide training or access to training for COVID-19 vaccination providers and track completion of that training to ensure providers are ready to vaccinate as soon as vaccine becomes available.

Guidance to support jurisdictions in enrolling COVID-19 vaccination providers and reporting enrollment information to CDC is provided below. This guidance does not apply to federal agencies or federal pharmacy partners. CDC has established a separate process and agreement for these entities.

General Outreach Process Considerations

Jurisdictions are responsible for developing enrollment procedures and facilitating enrollment of providers in the COVID-19 Vaccination Program.

Jurisdictions should:

• Develop and implement their approach for recruiting eligible providers
• Conduct outreach to eligible providers, including communicating the:

• • COVID-19 Vaccination Program requirements
  • Jurisdiction’s enrollment procedures
• Establish a process to obtain completed provider agreements from providers.

Once provider agreements are signed, the jurisdiction should:

• Per CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccination Program Interim Playbook for Jurisdiction Operations, report provider enrollment data to CDC electronically every Monday and Thursday by 9 pm ET.
• Enroll providers in the IIS.
• Enter all provider locations in VTrckS.
• Ensure the COVID-19 vaccine field (Special Project Provider) in the ExIS interface is added to the provider’s master record in VTrckS using one of these methods:
  • ExIS Interface. CDC created a new attribute in the ExIS Provider Master Data file to support the pandemic response using the existing field known as “Special Project Provider.” CDC is tracking pandemic providers by monitoring the jurisdictions who have updated their existing VFC providers and new providers supporting COVID-19 with the number “2” in the Special Project Provider field. Information about the value has been published in the VTrckS ExIS Specification D06 document and available for use by all ExIS awardees.
  • VTrckS. Update individual provider records directly in CRM or use the marketing mass attribute update or the upload tool to update multiple records.
• Ensure the Provider Agreement includes an email address for the main contact or provider facility to facilitate enrollment in Vaccines.gov. Vaccines.gov matches information from the Provider Agreement that jurisdictions report electronically to CDC with information in VTrckS to pre-enroll providers. Providers will receive an e-mail invitation to access Vaccines.gov when they are pre-enrolled.
• Provide training or access to training for each of the training topics covered in Section 5 of the COVID-19 Vaccination Program Interim Playbook for Jurisdiction Operations and track training completion.

• Promote v-safe to your providers and ask them to supply the v-safe fact sheet and information to vaccination recipients at point of service. It’s important for providers to encourage patients to opt in.
  • (Note: v-safe is a new smartphone-based, after-vaccination health checker for people who receive COVID-19 vaccines. v-safe uses text messaging and web surveys from CDC to check in with vaccine recipients about their symptoms and any change in health status following COVID-19 vaccination. After a person receives a dose of COVID-19 vaccine, messages will be sent:
    • Daily for one week
    • Weekly until 6 weeks after vaccination
    • Once at 3, 6, and 12 months after vaccination
  • The system also provides live telephone follow up to anyone who reports a clinically important event during any v-safe health check, with additional reporting to VAERS if appropriate.
  • v-safe is optional. While COVID-19 vaccines are held to FDA’s scientific standards for safety and efficacy under an EUA or licensure, participants in v-safe will benefit from knowing that their experience following vaccination is being tracked and will help CDC continue to monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.

• Inform providers about CDC’s second-dose reminder text message system, VaxText^sm, if your jurisdiction does not already have a similar system in place. VaxText^sm, is a vaccine reminder/recall text message program that vaccine recipients can opt into for reminders to schedule their second vaccination. This system is provided as a resource to support a jurisdiction’s second-dose reminder efforts, if needed.

Once COVID-19 vaccine is being administered, the jurisdiction should:  

• Monitor Tiberius daily for COVID-19 vaccine inventory reports from enrolled providers.
• Continue outreach to encourage more providers to complete and sign the Provider Agreement. As more COVID-19 vaccine supply becomes available, jurisdictions will need a broader provider network to administer vaccine.

Requirements to Consider when Planning Eligible Provider Enrollment

When recruiting providers for enrollment, jurisdictions must ensure providers sign and understand the requirements of CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccination Provider Agreement that allows them to participate in the COVID-19 Vaccination Program. Continue to check the CDC IIS Awardees SharePoint portal for updates or contact your project officer.

Continue to check the CDC IIS Awardees SharePoint portal for updates or contact your project officer.