In part two of our series, we are continuing to cover Albany, Georgia, the fourth highest hotspot in the world for COVID-19 cases back in 2020, where Phoebe Putney Health System was at the center of what was happening. After their initial pivot in managing this crisis, what strategy did they develop to provide the vaccine to the community? Find out here.
Part 1: Navigating the disaster response challenges of COVID-19.
Part 2: Vaccination strategy.
Special guest(s):
CMIO Dr. William Sewell, and VP and CIO Jesse Diaz, at Phoebe Putney Health System
Title: Planning a Covid-19 Vaccination Strategy
Guests:
Jesse Diaz, VP and CIO, Phoebe Putney Health System
Dr. William Sewell, CMIO, Phoebe Putney Health System
Host: Christine Parent, Associate Vice President, MEDITECH
Dr. Sewell: We wanted to be the leaders with the vaccination activity down here.
Christine: I'm Christine Parent, MEDITECH's Associate Vice President, and, once again, I'm talking with Phoebe Putney Health System in Albany, Georgia. This city was one of the world's top epicenters affected by COVID-19. During our last segment, we heard how the health and patient community came together in those first critical months to deliver quality care despite so many obstacles. A very impressive and heartwarming story, for sure. Today, we continue with Phoebe Putney's story to hear their latest efforts in the midst of this ongoing pandemic. We'll uncover their vaccination strategy and community outreach efforts.
So, once again, I'm thrilled to have here with us, CMIO, Dr. William Sewell, and VP and CIO, Jesse Diaz. Gentlemen, welcome back.
Now, it's 2021, and you're facing a new surge right now of COVID patients. Only this time with a more hopeful look of, you know, who's getting vaccinated, and what you mentioned for having the equipment and the PPE's. What is your process for vaccinating as many patients as possible? And, can you just let us know how it's going?
Dr. Sewell: So back in August, we did some research about what we would need, and we found out that Pfizer was probably the quickest vaccine, on the quickest track, to be able to be to us. We realized it needed ultra cold storage. So we ordered three ultra cold freezers. One for each of our campuses. We applied to be a mass vaccination site just as early as you possibly could because the state got flooded, the department of community health got flooded, with applications as time went on and people realized they need to do that, while ours had been in and approved before most people ever filled theirs out. It was a little bit of being proactive that made us ready to go.
We have some great corporate help, folks who, along with the incident commander, had done some vaccination-type activities before. So, once again, we converted the fun camp at the gym. This gym is multi-purpose for us but it's an employee gym in an old high school across the street from the hospital, normally used for CrossFit, but it was now turned into a mass vaccination site. They went over, they planned how the patients would work through. They planned how they would stay socially distanced while they worked their way through. They planned their 15-minute waiting area; I mean, just had it down to a T. And we wound up at the peak, after it opened up and the governor told us we could do everybody 65 years and older, we were doing 800 or 900 people. We were vaccinating 800 or 900 people a day and getting that done in about eight hours. And you just wouldn't believe the compliments about how smooth it went. Never a line. Nobody waited in line, ever, more than five minutes. And most of the time there was no line. They were, actually, the vaccination team was actually saying, "Come on, we can do a thousand a day; we might be able to do 1,200 a day." We were just pushing the limits just as much as we could. You know, we wound up getting pretty much everybody who wanted a vaccine, who met the criteria, could get one here in Albany, Georgia.
Jesse: I have family in Macon, Georgia, and I have a granddaughter I hadn't seen in six months. Part of the reason for that is because her great-grandmother is elderly, of course, and they couldn't find a place to get vaccinated. So I called up there, said, "When are they getting their vaccine?" "Well, we can't get in, you know, we call, nobody answers. It's impossible." I said, "Well, come down here. We got plenty of room, we got vaccine, and we're very organized." And, sure enough, they came. They called, they said, yes, because they're Georgia residents. They came, they got vaccinated, were in and out of here in 30 minutes. They loved it. They went back and told more folks in Macon, and some of those people came down here. We had to kind of shut that down a little bit for a little while. But then the state said, "No, if they're Georgia residents, you got a vaccine, they want a vaccine, you give it to them." Which is good, that's fine, and we did.
So, you know, it's, we really did a tremendous job with that whole vaccination process. And had gotten close to low on inventory at, I think, just last week, beginning of last week or week before last - I can't recall, they run together. We started running low, and I was sitting there thinking, wow, this is just like the supplies. But I said, something's gonna happen. I know, somehow, we're going to get through this. We're going to get supplies. We're going to get inventory in here. And sure enough, now we got a lot of vaccine. What we need now is more arms. That's where, that's where we are right now. We really have a lot of, we can, we can run a thousand people through there, easily, with no problems at all. No, no, it's people really, really like how they're treated when they come there.
Christine: That's great. One thing that I know is a challenge in healthcare is to make sure that you're able to reach out to those underserved communities who are often the most vulnerable, and may not be as connected. How have you gone and reached out to these communities with these vaccinations that you mentioned?
Dr Sewell: Our community has some of those harder to reach demographics, so we have mobile units. We have a couple of converted recreational vehicles that can go out and give vaccines. They have only come on the scene recently. But they are trying to go out to some of these underserved areas, where possibly a homebound person, or somebody with a lack of transportation, or people who aren't on the internet 24 hours a day, 365, 7 days a week. They might have even not known that the vaccine was available to them.
So, there's actually been some door-to-door canvassing that's gone on. You know, we did a study. Our strategic planning folks did a study of the different zip codes, and who lived in them, and where would be the best place to have some activities. We have five different community centers here in town, and they studied those and discovered one that really had the potential to have a lot of folks who would like the vaccine but may not, for one reason or the other, been able to come get it. So we had a Saturday event over there which went very well.
It's just any way, once again, the innovation, the you know, I'm just amazed by the way ideas-folks can come up with that are thinking outside of the box to reach people. They continue to do that. We have a federally funded clinic here in town; they've done some of the same thing. Wherever there's a large enough, covered area — gymnasium, community center, whatever — folks have learned how to go and do a pop-up vaccine site and get this vaccine to people who want it.
Christine: That's incredible. So, I'm going to end on this question, and then I'm going to ask you gentlemen a personal question. That's how we do the podcast here at MEDITECH. This really has been an unprecedented time for healthcare in the US and the world. As your health system moves to the future, what are you going to carry forward from this experience?
Jesse: We learn so much from all these disasters we've had down here. So, we're certainly carrying forward the fact that we're so prepared and know we can organize ourselves so well. So it's, I don't know, a certain sense of confidence, knowledge that we're very dependable as a team, very reliable. A lot of really good people here that can get things done. As long as I'm in this organization, I feel pretty confident that we can just about meet any challenge that we have to encounter. I guess that's some of the things I carry. That confidence, that knowledge that we're going to handle anything we can. That we're very people-oriented. We take care of our employees. That they're our number one asset.
Dr. Sewell: After having lived through what we've lived through, each one seemed to escalate a little bit — each disaster seemed to escalate a little bit. You know that, as long as I'm at Phoebe Putney, there's not much that scares me. I'm going to go forward with the confidence that we handle pretty much anything that's thrown at us. And I will tell you, you hear so much negative stuff, potentially, about the hospital, about your workforce, about whatever, you know, we tend to focus on what's not going right, what's going wrong. We don't so much celebrate what's going right. But throughout this whole, and it'll be a year tomorrow since we had our first COVID patient. Throughout this whole experience, and we have our faults just like everybody else, but throughout this whole thing I could not have been prouder to work where I work and with the people that I work with.
Christine: Well, thank you gentlemen very much. Like I said, you know our hearts went out to you when we heard what was going down there. But we knew you had created, as you were talking about, a team that really could come together, be innovative and, you know, move forward. So thank you very much for sharing this experience.
I'm going to end on a different note. Usually we ask a funny question at the end. I know that this is somewhat of a somber conversation, so I'm going to change it up a little bit for this one and ask each of you this. During this past year, when we had the PAC, we were asking some of the physicians, what got them through? When you needed to take a stress break or if you needed to do something that's a little different that you enjoy doing just for that break. Could you gentlemen share with us what you did for that stressful break? Whether that was bike riding, singing, watching Netflix. What got you through this event?
Dr. Sewell: So, I'll go first on this. And, Christine, I have watched more Netflix than I have in the past. There's not been a ton of time for that though. We've been working quite a bit, but I'll tell you I have enjoyed spending time outside more. I've figured, I've always been an outside person anyway, but I've really treasured my time outside. You know, we have a lot of farmland, a lot of forests down here, and I've just enjoyed getting back to nature. That usually involves taking my grandsons with me. Between those two things since, besides coming to work, that's about the only socialization folks could have. You know, for many, many months there you had to have people just in your social bubble. Jesse mentioned not being around some of his family; you know, I've not seen my parents in several, several months except on Zoom calls and those kinds of things. You had to draw closer to the people that were around you. So I have, if there can be a silver lining for this and I truly consider it that, it makes you reconsider what's most important to you and what you most enjoy. So that's how I've gotten through.
Christine: Thank you, Dr. Sewell. How about you, Jesse?
Jesse: Well, as I started thinking back, the worst part of the whole thing for me was when we had the actual shutdown, lockdown, quarantine — whatever you want to call it — when basically all the restaurants are closed, movie theaters, everything. You couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't do anything. The way to relax then, for my family, we did a couple different things. But one of them was we'd get in a jeep on a weekend and this was March so we're starting to get warm down here — pretty warm, March, April, May — and then just go out. We couldn't go anywhere so, basically, go out somewhere in the jeep. Just ride country roads. We've always enjoyed that. It's always fun and relaxing.
Then there's a place here called the Little Grand Canyon. And it looks like a little grand, miniature, little Grand Canyon. I remember the first weekend we were in lockdown, we got the jeep and we drove up there, and that was a nice experience. We still always like sitting down on the back patio and just grilling out. Sit and listen to music. I have a TV that I put out there, that is one of those Roku TVs, and we just watch movies and then chill out. That was during that period of time when it was probably the most stressful. I think slowly but surely everybody kind of started getting, you know, things started opening up a little bit. Things getting a little bit more relaxed.
So you know, you had more opportunities to travel. I have a home in Dothan, Alabama, too. We were even afraid to go over there at first because, okay, we go over there, what are we gonna do? You know, we're gonna stay in a house over there or stay in the house over here. But we did, we started doing that a little bit. And then I've got family over there as well. So we would see them. And those kinds of things. So that’s all, you know, you just look for opportunities to do something different and not think about all this.
Christine: Well, thank you very much for sharing your experience with us today. I know that you were in a unique position early on but you came through, and hopefully there's hope at the end of the tunnel for all of us. We're looking forward to getting back to what we consider the new normal. Thank you for sharing your experiences and what your organization went through.
Thanks for listening. Next time, in honor of Patient Safety Experience week, we'll talk with St Luke's Regional Health System to hear how they significantly increased Patient Portal usage during the COVID-19 surge. Lots of great innovations and tips for us to learn, and I'm looking forward to it.
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