August 4, 2021

WILMINGTON, NC—In late July, over 50 leading organizations in healthcare and healthcare education, including the Organization for Associate Degree Nursing, signed off on their support for a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers, directly impacting all healthcare students taking part in clinical rotations. With the beginning of the fall semester fast approaching, the recommendation leaves many colleges and universities scrambling for a way to manage the difficult task of collecting, reviewing, and storing private medical documents to prove vaccination status – while avoiding the many legal pitfalls – for a significant portion of their student population.

As many colleges and universities have discovered, asking students to show proof of vaccination is one thing. But managing the process can be difficult, time consuming and legally fraught if not handled carefully. To comply, schools need to collect, manage, review, store, and share dozens, hundreds or thousands of private medical records while maintaining compliance with complex Federal and state regulations like the ADA, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, HIPAA, EEOC and GINA. They’re also the matter of individual state waiver laws, which may grant exemptions for medical, religious or philosophical reasons.

One solution on the market, RealVaccinationID.com by CastleBranch, provides schools with a way to navigate and manage the complex vaccine mandate process, with the added benefit of doing so with a company already working within 80 percent of the college and university market today.

“We’ve helped colleges and universities comply with existing vaccine mandates – for flu, MMR, and more – for the last two decades,” said Brett Martin, CastleBranch CEO. “We kept these students in mind from day one when developing RealVaccinationID.com to make sure they had a responsible path forward to communicate their status to their schools and communities.”

RealVaccinationID.com cards provide digital and physical proof of vaccination or exemption status for those students who must now comply with healthcare’s vaccine mandate. Prior to being issued a card, students are asked to submit proof of their vaccination or waiver status, along with their name, date of birth, address, photo ID and other personal identifiers. A team of trained experts reviews and verifies the medical information under CastleBranch’s “nothing about me without me” policy, which protects the individual’s private data. The driver’s license-sized cards incorporate sophisticated forgery-prevention technology, including holographic film similar to those found on state-issued IDs, to help individuals prove they’ve received the COVID-19 vaccine or qualify for vaccine exemption while making counterfeiting or forgery next to impossible.

CastleBranch, an infectious disease screening, compliance management, and nationally accredited consumer reporting agency, is one of the leading providers of vaccination and immunization tracking in the United States. With 25 years’ experience, the company has tracked, reviewed, and/or stored over 35 million medical documents for a majority of healthcare education programs across the nation–including complex vaccination, immunization, and waiver documentation. The company also leads the nation in badging credentialing, making CastleBranch uniquely suited to developing state-of-the-art, tamper-proof vaccine passports.

For more information, visit www.RealVaccinationID.com.