VACCINE INJURY ACT OF 1986
Did you know that in the United States there is a National Vaccine Injury Court (the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program or NVICP/VICP) that has paid out over four billion dollars in damages?1 There is also a vaccine injury database for public reporting called VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System).2 In my medical coding career, I have never received training on VAERS reporting, even though the CDC has an ACIP program that requires doctors to report to VAERS. Reporting fell squarely into the responsibilities of the medical records department. You’d think I would have been aware of VAERS, but sadly no. At one point, I was head-hunted by Oxford, The Mayo Clinic’s risk management department said, “work for us anytime” and I was recruited to be an educator at Stanford. That generally doesn’t happen to uninformed people in the industry, and I still didn’t know about VAERS until the pandemic.