February 29, 2024 – MCIR would like to inform you that the enforcement of race and ethnicity fields submitted via HL7 has been extended. Starting July 2024, MCIR will reject any VXU message submitted without the required race and ethnicity fields resulting in an ERROR. This means that the practice MUST resubmit the message with the race/ethnicity data.  Please work with your EHR vendor to confirm the values are supported. Values can be found in the HL7 Specification for Vaccination Messages Guide.

PREVIOUS COMMUNICATION:

Beginning on July 26, 2023, the MCIR system will start flagging missing race and ethnicity fields submitted via HL7 with a warning message.

This warning message notifies the HL7 transfer sender or practice that the race and ethnicity categories when submitting a VXU message to inform the practice that PID 10-1 (race) and PID 22-1 (ethnicity) fields are now a requirement. Warning messages will be shown in both the response (ACK) message to the sender and the HL7 Transfer Report for each VXU message submitted that is missing race and ethnicity fields.

Beginning on February 28, 2024, MCIR will reject any VXU message submitted without the required race and ethnicity fields resulting in an ERROR.

Any message submitted with missing race/ethnicity fields will not be accepted and result in an error. This means that the practice MUST resubmit the message with the race/ethnicity data included for the message to be accepted into MCIR.

If a patient declines to answer race or ethnicity, they can populate “UNK” for unknown in both fields. This message will be accepted by MCIR and not result in a warning/error.

Beginning on July 26, 2023, the MCIR system will start flagging missing race and ethnicity fields submitted via HL7 with a warning message.

This warning message notifies the HL7 transfer sender or practice that the race and ethnicity categories when submitting a VXU message to inform the practice that PID 10-1 (race) and PID 22-1 (ethnicity) fields are now a requirement. Warning messages will be shown in both the response (ACK) message to the sender and the HL7 Transfer Report for each VXU message submitted that is missing race and ethnicity fields.

Beginning on February 28, 2024, MCIR will reject any VXU message submitted without the required race and ethnicity fields resulting in an ERROR.

Any message submitted with missing race/ethnicity fields will not be accepted and result in an error. This means that the practice MUST resubmit the message with the race/ethnicity data included for the message to be accepted into MCIR.

If a patient declines to answer race or ethnicity, they can populate “UNK” for unknown in both fields. This message will be accepted by MCIR and not result in a warning/error.