Immunization Clinic Thread

Operations/Work Flows
1

At the webinar last week, we discussed the many questions our audience has about the many challenges and obstacles to executing a full “vaccine clinic” in the face of the incoming delivery of COVID vaccines for 5-11yo. It’s my belief that pediatricians ought to be very territorial about who immunizes the kids in their practices.

We gathered a list of questions from the webinar (and elsewhere) and I said I’d post them here as a starting point for our discussions! My goal is to gather enough Questions and Answers that I can put together a quick extra webinar with Paulie.

So, have questions about giving COVID vaccines? Have experience doing it? Add to the thread!

Comments from the webinar:

  • More info on how to make covid vaccination clinic work
  • Do folks plan to give the vaccine at well visits? We discussed it today and the trouble is that it will be difficult to schedule the follow up.
  • We plan to do at Well visits AND weekend drive throughs- the follow ups might need to be the drive through, as there is a window for the interval
  • We are ready to go! Will give at any visit we are able and have planned drive thru clinics ready to schedule on Saturdays too.
  • With how busy we are, we don’t feel like we have the manpower to run a covid vaccine clinic! Ideas needed…
  • Our office liability wouldn’t cover a shot clinic in parking lot. What type of policy have offices gotten to do this and thru what agencies?
  • For 12 and up we give shots during the well check and have 2nd shots usually on Fridays
  • Do we have to physically monitor the kids after the covid vaccine for 15 min or can they be nearby in the lobby or the parking lot?
  • We are in new Yorick city so can’t do drive through clinics. Would love to hear what other city practices are doing…
  • We are short staffed on MAs right now and nurses and worried how we will manage the vaccine with our current staff shortages.
  • If giving vaccines at well visits how are practices handling storage and timing of usage of the opened multi dose vial.
  • Look at Hotel conference rooms as an inside option
  • My staff and office are already stretched thin. In order to do a COVID-19 clinic we need to do after hours. Our building won’t be able to accommodate a clinic after hours. So, this means asking staff to work overtime. I have heard that practices are either losing money, or not making money on these visits. How can we afford to pay staff.
  • Would love to see a covid vaccine special. :+1:And yes, the logistics wisdom of accommodating the wait time in our parking lot or nearby on the street during a big clinic would be awesome. Being able to stay onsite where all of our resources are is our goal.
  • how do we keep our small, overworked staff willing and happy to work extra to give Covid vaccines
  • You can also contact the local chamber of commerce and they will rent a room inexpensively.
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We’ve been giving Covid vaccines to 12 and up for some time, including members of the community. We have 2 full time nurses and 1 part time nurse. To help my already overworked staff, we offered Covid vaccines only on days that we had all 3 nurses. We allow 2 families at a time and have them come into the office in 15-30 minute increments. They wait in our empty waiting rooms. The front desk keeps an eye on them.

We did a drive thru clinic where I sent the nurses down to the parking lot for 1 hour, just giving vaccines while I worked up and saw my patients in the office. We blocked the schedule for only sick visits and telemed appointments during that time. We have them wait in their cars for 15 minutes, then they can drive off.

The nurses loved this, because it gave them a break in their routine and drive thru clinic just runs so much faster that in-office shot visits. (We can easily give up to 60 shots in a hour with 3 nurses in a drive-thru clinic).

Because Georgia ends up wasting a lot of vaccines, we are being told to give vaccines during well checks and not worry about waste. They have told me that the vials will be thrown away anyway.

1 Like
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We’ve been administering the COVID vaccine since March. We have a nurse schedule available all day with approximately 40-50 appt slots per day, including both COVID and flu appt types. We are also administering during WCCss, and having the patient stop at the front desk to schedule their booster. We have 1 nurse that runs the nurse/vaccine schedule all day. We discussed Saturday clinics or evenings, but also struggle with stretching clinical staff too thin.

4

We’ve been giving the COVID vaccine to patients and their adult relatives/friends since May. We’re a small office. Did not do any specific “vaccination clinics,” just schedule the vaccines in our office. They can do it at the same time as a WCC or by itself.

For the pediatric vaccine, I think we will treat it like another flu vaccine - give it at WCC or sick visits w/o fever. We will probably try to group the appts so that doses aren’t wasted but aside from that, it’s just like another flu shot.

One thing we did for the COVID vaccine is to start using HelloSign (like Docusign) for patients to complete the waiver and questionnaire paperwork ahead of time. About 10% of patients would do this. But any amount of paperwork done ahead is great, saves lots of hassle during the visit. Then we started to use HellSign for new patient forms too and again about 10% of NPs would complete ahead of the appt.