October 9, 2026- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week launched a series of actions to strengthen how the federal government identifies, documents, investigates, and responds to health problems reported following vaccination, with a focus on improving patient care and generating better evidence about potential vaccine-related injuries.
To address health problems Americans report after vaccinations, HHS:
- Opened a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinic dedicated to studying and caring for patients experiencing health problems following vaccination;
- Proposed reimbursing physicians for reporting suspected vaccine-related injuries to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) through a new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) policy, bringing vaccine reporting in Medicare in line with typical Medicare reimbursement policies;
- Will require electronic health records to capture vaccine-related adverse events so that information can follow patients across the health care system; and
- Is modernizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) VAERS to make reporting simpler and improve the tools available to researchers and medical professionals investigating potential safety signals.