SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION
Automated Vital Statistics System
Technical Advisory Group
2006 Annual Meeting
December 6, 2006
1.
Introduction by Attendees and Opening Statements.
Ron
Williams (UCSB) welcomed meeting participants, who reviewed the summary of the
October 2005 TAG meeting. Note: TAG
summaries are available on the Web at: http://www.avss.ucsb.edu/tag.htm
Ron
observed that September 2006 was the 25th anniversary of AVSS, which
was first operational at Cottage Hospital in
2.
Summary of 2007 Birth Certificate and AVSS Changes.
Ron
summarized the significant changes to the birth certificate that would take
effect on January 1, 2007, and he provided the group with a handout that
detailed the changes. These changes
affect both the hard-copy birth certificate as well as the electronic-only
fields. Additionally, the VS 10-B
Race/Ethnicity and Education Worksheet is being eliminated but the information,
including new reporting values for education, will be reproduced on the back of
the hard-copy birth certificate. Alan
Oppenheim emphasized that birth clerks should not write on the Race/Ethnicity
and Education Worksheet on the back of the birth certificate but instead should
print a copy of the worksheet off the AVSS website for data collection. Details are available on the AVSS website at
www.avss.ucsb.edu. Ron also said that
the 2007 version would be known as AVSS 2007.
AVSS
2007 was being programmed to switch over to the new selection lists for fields
that were modified for births occurring on or after January 1, 2007. AVSS 2007 will be deployed during December
2006. The changes will be transparent to
users when creating birth certificates with birth dates before January 1, 2007.
John Marinko demonstrated how the 22 new data fields
will appear on the AVSS input screen. He
also demonstrated completion of an electronic birth record in the AVSS 2007
format and illustrated some of the new information available through help
prompts. As part of this demonstration,
he showed the group the new Race lists.
Glen
Nishida has revised the quick reference on-line manual available on the AVSS
website.
Alan
advised meeting participants that a new “manager’s mail message” would appear
whenever a user logged onto AVSS. The
new message would remind users that the birth certificate has changed for 2007,
that users need to use the year-appropriate birth certificate form, that users
should check vertical alignment of the form and conduct a test to verify the
vertical alignment is correct, and that users should be careful to include the
correct year and numbering sequence when adding the Local File Number. Alan indicated that the appearance of the new
manager’s mail message would indicate that AVSS had been updated. Ron described
the out-of-sequence numbering of fields 18 (Race) and 19 (Hispanic). These fields retain the same numbering for
2007, but have been reversed in sequence so that responses are more accurate.
3.
AVSS Modification Requests.
John demonstrated how to
submit and track AVSS modification requests using the AMR screen on the AVSS
website. There were no noteworthy AMRs for this
meeting.
4.
AVSS/NET.
Ron reported that AVSS/NET
deployment was completed in April 2006, with all 56 AVSS counties now using the
system.
5.
Demonstration of Bar Code Registration.
John demonstrated use of bar
code registration – use of a scanner to retrieve an electronic birth
certificate for registration purposes. The
group was advised that Social Security Numbers are encrypted for security
reasons and not visible to the hospital or local registration district once the
record becomes an LCA.
6.
Site of Care Imports.
Peter reported that he has
completed development of a computer program to import data from Site of Care
into AVSS 2007.
7.
CMR (Confidential Morbidity Report).
Stan Bissell (DCDC) reported
on CMR activities.
8.
EDRS.
Alan led a discussion about the
possibility of importing data from EDRS into AVSS. This topic arose in response to previous
inquiries from counties who are interested in maintaining a set of death data
in AVSS. After reviewing county uses of
AVSS death data, the participants were in support of further work on developing
the ability to import death data. Alan
asked the participants to provide, at some future date, an indication of which
data fields should be imported – such as, AVSS mandatory fields only, AVSS
mandatory and optional fields, or all fields reported
in EDRS.
9.
AVSS Technical Assistance.
Ron advised the group that
charges for technical assistance will remain unchanged for 2007.
10.
Next Meeting.
The next TAG meeting will be
scheduled for December 2007, to be held in the Sacramento East End
Complex.
11. Adjournment.
The meeting was adjourned at
2:00 p.m.
Acknowledgement:
This summary was written by Jessica McCarroll.
