TY - JOUR
T1 - Rolling up the Sleeve
T2 - Equitable, Efficient, and Safe COVID-19 Mass Immunization for Academic Medical Center Employees
AU - Mcdonald, Samuel
AU - Basit, Mujeeb A.
AU - Toomay, Seth
AU - Mclarty, Christopher
AU - Hernandez, Susan
AU - Rubio, Chris
AU - Brown, Bruce J.
AU - Rauschuber, Mark
AU - Lai, Ki
AU - Saleh, Sameh N.
AU - Willett, Du Wayne L.
AU - Lehmann, Christoph U.
AU - Medford, Richard J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Georg Thieme Verlag. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/10/1
Y1 - 2021/10/1
N2 - Background ?Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine administration has faced distribution barriers across the United States. We sought to delineate our vaccine delivery experience in the first week of vaccine availability, and our effort to prioritize employees based on risk with a goal of providing an efficient infrastructure to optimize speed and efficiency of vaccine delivery while minimizing risk of infection during the immunization process. Objective ?This article aims to evaluate an employee prioritization/invitation/scheduling system, leveraging an integrated electronic health record patient portal framework for employee COVID-19 immunizations at an academic medical center. Methods ?We conducted an observational cross-sectional study during January 2021 at a single urban academic center. All employees who met COVID-19 allocation vaccine criteria for phase 1a.1 to 1a.4 were included. We implemented a prioritization/invitation/scheduling framework and evaluated time from invitation to scheduling as a proxy for vaccine interest and arrival to vaccine administration to measure operational throughput. Results ?We allotted vaccines for 13,753 employees but only 10,662 employees with an active patient portal account received an invitation. Of those with an active account, 6,483 (61%) scheduled an appointment and 6,251 (59%) were immunized in the first 7 days. About 66% of invited providers were vaccinated in the first 7 days. In contrast, only 41% of invited facility/food service employees received the first dose of the vaccine in the first 7 days (p < 0.001). At the vaccination site, employees waited 5.6 minutes (interquartile range [IQR]: 3.9-8.3) from arrival to vaccination. Conclusion ?We developed a system of early COVID-19 vaccine prioritization and administration in our health care system. We saw strong early acceptance in those with proximal exposure to COVID-19 but noticed significant difference in the willingness of different employee groups to receive the vaccine.
AB - Background ?Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine administration has faced distribution barriers across the United States. We sought to delineate our vaccine delivery experience in the first week of vaccine availability, and our effort to prioritize employees based on risk with a goal of providing an efficient infrastructure to optimize speed and efficiency of vaccine delivery while minimizing risk of infection during the immunization process. Objective ?This article aims to evaluate an employee prioritization/invitation/scheduling system, leveraging an integrated electronic health record patient portal framework for employee COVID-19 immunizations at an academic medical center. Methods ?We conducted an observational cross-sectional study during January 2021 at a single urban academic center. All employees who met COVID-19 allocation vaccine criteria for phase 1a.1 to 1a.4 were included. We implemented a prioritization/invitation/scheduling framework and evaluated time from invitation to scheduling as a proxy for vaccine interest and arrival to vaccine administration to measure operational throughput. Results ?We allotted vaccines for 13,753 employees but only 10,662 employees with an active patient portal account received an invitation. Of those with an active account, 6,483 (61%) scheduled an appointment and 6,251 (59%) were immunized in the first 7 days. About 66% of invited providers were vaccinated in the first 7 days. In contrast, only 41% of invited facility/food service employees received the first dose of the vaccine in the first 7 days (p < 0.001). At the vaccination site, employees waited 5.6 minutes (interquartile range [IQR]: 3.9-8.3) from arrival to vaccination. Conclusion ?We developed a system of early COVID-19 vaccine prioritization and administration in our health care system. We saw strong early acceptance in those with proximal exposure to COVID-19 but noticed significant difference in the willingness of different employee groups to receive the vaccine.
KW - COVID-19
KW - electronic health record
KW - employee health
KW - immunization
KW - patient portal
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85120318817&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85120318817&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1055/s-0041-1739517
DO - 10.1055/s-0041-1739517
M3 - Article
C2 - 34788889
AN - SCOPUS:85120318817
SN - 1869-0327
VL - 12
SP - 1074
EP - 1081
JO - Applied Clinical Informatics
JF - Applied Clinical Informatics
IS - 5
ER -