The Florida Vaccines for Children ProgramOrdering VaccinesImportant Information Regarding your Publicly-Funded Vaccine OrdersThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has restructured how it distributes publicly-funded vaccines to providers to improve efficiency and accountability, reduce costs, and enhance the CDC’s ability to respond to public health emergencies, including shortages, natural disasters, and disease outbreaks. This effort has been extremely successful. One of the key steps was to start placing publicly-funded vaccine orders on a set order frequency cycle, based upon your publicly-funded vaccine usage and storage capacity. The CDC now has more current and extensive data than what was available. As a result, we are going to adjust the existing order frequencies for some providers over the next few months. We will begin following an industry best practice method, Economic Order Quantity (EOQ), to manage publicly-funded vaccine orders and distribution more effectively. EOQ balances provider order size, order frequency, the timing of orders, and storage and handling to minimize costs and improve efficiencies as orders flow through the system. EOQ assigns a vaccine order frequency (i.e., monthly, bimonthly, and quarterly) based on the size of the population served with publicly-funded vaccine, and two-week order windows within the given ordering frequencies (i.e., first-half of a specific month, second-half of a specific month) to smooth out the order flow nationwide. Vaccine order frequency is how often providers should place a vaccine order (refer to the chart below).
Two-week order window refers to either the first- or second-half of the month. If your order frequency is monthly, you have a specific half of the month to place your publicly-funded vaccine order. If your order frequency is bimonthly or quarterly, we will give you a specific month and a specific window (first or second half of that specific month) during that month to place your publicly-funded vaccine order. Vaccine Reporting Forms
This change will be in effect on Monday, May 3, 2010. If you have concerns with ordering during your order frequency cycle or order window, we will work with you on a case-by-case basis. We understand that maintaining a sufficient supply of publicly-funded vaccine is critical to your work; therefore, we will continue to review provider order frequencies on a regular basis and make adjustments as necessary. Because we anticipate that you may have questions, we will be holding three conference calls in April to provide you with an opportunity to learn more about EOQ and ask questions. There is no need to attend all the conference calls, the same information will be presented in each conference. Below is the conference calls schedule.
We recognize that all of our providers have adjusted to a number of changes as we have improved the publicly-funded vaccine program over the past few years, and we want to commend you and thank you for your support. We look forward to talking with you on one of the conference calls. |
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