Last November, we noted the complexity in developing a COVID-19 vaccine would only get matched by the complexity in distribution and administration. It has proven frustratingly slow: Less than half of the vaccines distributed have been administered as of January 25, but new solutions already exist in the U.S. that promise to streamline and hasten the process.
One is from Coastal Cloud, a provider of consulting, implementation, and managed services. Its Care4COVID is a vaccine management solution, built on Salesforce, to help governments and communities ensure access to and distribution of care, supplies, and financial recovery resources to their most vulnerable citizens.
Coastal Cloud is working with CDR Maguire: Health & Medical, which specializes in disaster health and medicine logistics, to assist the Florida Department of Health. They’re administering vaccines to thousands of its most vulnerable citizens, seniors, across six counties that are home to more than five million residents. They have already put Care4COVID into practice within CDR Maguire’s HealthPro™. More than 75,000 vaccinations have already been scheduled and administered, with another 130,000 vaccinations scheduled.
Solutions like this can be a game changer for state and local governments, which were supposed to work with the federal government to accurately report who has received a vaccine and forecast weekly needs. The problem? Many state and local governments do not have the resources to carry out such a complex distribution plan, which helps explain the huge disparity in vaccination rates from state to state.
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State and local governments need a way to quickly adjust and plan for rapidly fluctuating vaccine supplies. One week, states may record a vaccine surplus, forcing them to scramble to find more people to vaccinate. Other weeks, states have less doses than they expected, causing appointment cancellations if additional vaccines don’t materialize. This also points to the need for a more efficient, purpose-built way to handle the crush of appointment requests.
“It’s tempting to use the technology you already have, but using a call center, online forms, or other repurposed point solutions only lead to problems down the road, as we are seeing in many municipalities,” said Sara Hale, managing partner at Coastal Cloud.
What Care4COVID provides
The new solution integrates with the Salesforce platform, using real-time analytics and efficiencies to deliver a next-generation emergency management and public health tool. CDR HealthPro™ with Care4COVID provides:
- Vaccine management: Local governments can quickly onboard new vaccination sites with a contactless on-site check-in process. It begins with a QR code or confirmation code, followed by a step-by-step process of information collection. Administrators document all the vaccination details and assist on-site personnel to watch for any adverse reactions prior to a patient’s departure.
- Inventory management: Easily customizable dashboards and reports display inventory by provider. This includes scheduled shipments and — this is key — confirmation of the number of vaccines actually delivered to the site. Site administrators can view inventory across multiple locations alongside appointments to ensure proper inventory allocation. New mapping features highlight ‘vaccine deserts,’ allowing health officials to pivot and identify vulnerable, underserved populations.
- Vaccination appointment scheduling: This allows citizens to schedule appointments online and helps administrators perform health prerequisite surveys and prioritize risk levels. After assessing risk, administrators send appointment confirmations via email and text message.
- Citizen portal: Patient-entered data provides vaccine administration teams with the information needed to quickly administer the vaccine upon arrival, monitor any side effects, and schedule patients’ second vaccination.
Helping millions of people
With COVID-19 still raging — the world surpassed 100 million confirmed cases on January 26 — widespread vaccination needs better management, with new scalable systems getting implemented in weeks, not months. Yes, the rapid development of the vaccines was astonishing, but the focus now needs to turn to getting shots in arms. Technology can help move this along.
“The Salesforce platform is quickly deployable, has built-in capabilities that are made to handle the challenges faced by public health authorities, and provides end-to-end efficiency,” Hale said. “After using Salesforce to manage COVID-19 testing sites, which scheduled and tracked over one million tests, we knew we could scale in the same way with vaccine management.”
The power of analytics and the latest Salesforce platform allows governments to anonymously map and track individuals in real time as people register for and receive the COVID-19 vaccine, while following federal health privacy guidelines.
This is the largest, most complex vaccination campaign in history. No one anticipated distribution and administration at this scale would be easy, but as the Coastal Cloud rollout shows, it can be much more streamlined.
Learn how to mobilize, manage and scale vaccine administration. Get the playbook.
