As COVID-19 vaccinations are underway globally, health care professionals face a historic task on a scale and speed not seen before. Cerner is proud to provide health technology and support to help hospitals manage COVID-19 mass vaccination events that are critical to getting the pandemic under control.
Last week, Cerner provided the physical location, technology, support and approximately 400 associate volunteers to make a mass vaccination event possible for Kansas City area communities. Cerner joined Operation Safe, a local county-wide coalition dedicated to vaccinating residents. The coalition of several municipalities, hospitals and Cerner anticipates vaccinating 4,500 individuals every other week and is prepared to increase the volume to 3,500 per day as more vaccines become available.
In early 2020 as cases were on the rise worldwide, Cerner began preparing for COVID-19 vaccines by reaching out to clients big and small, urban and rural to make sure they had the technology necessary to be ready for a large-scale vaccination effort. With many hospital and health system clients playing a community-wide vaccination role, they would need a patient-first strategy that included technology outside of the core electronic health record (EHR). Cerner prepared a list of various recommendations to help U.S. and non-U.S. clients use their technology for patient outreach, scheduling opportunities, clinician administration best practices, billing, and reporting and analytics tracking post vaccine.
In addition, Cerner provided hospitals with its Mass Vaccination solution to supplement rapid vaccination of frontline staff and patients without sacrificing safety checks or administration documentation. 175 clients across 11 countries have installed Cerner’s Mass Vaccination solution, which helps clinicians register patients and identify, administer and record vaccination. The new solution gives clinicians the relevant information from the EHR, helping to streamline the process to screen for and administer vaccines while flagging important information like drug and allergy interactions.
Below are examples of clients from around the world using Cerner technology to aid in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout:
- With the support of Cerner technology, Northern Light Health in Maine has administered almost 3,000 doses in a week’s time and expects to ramp up efforts as additional doses become available.
- Cook County Health is using its Cerner technology to help administer around 18,000 vaccine doses every week at each of its five sites across Chicago.
- In December, Truman Medical Centers/University Health in Kansas City successfully administered the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to health care workers in the metro area.
- The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and U.S. Coast Guard are using Mass Vaccination configured within their electronic health record modernization initiative to administer the COVID-19 vaccine.
- Abroad, Milton Keynes University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (MKUH) became an early adopter of Mass Vaccination as the UK began its rapid COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
Having the right health technology is critically important to support health care professionals as they take on this monumental task. Cerner has years of experience helping clients with large-scale immunization campaigns, making sure hospitals and health systems are armed with solutions and infrastructure to successfully and quickly get vaccine doses “in arms” and track details for the appropriate health agencies. Cerner has the privilege of bringing together knowledge gleaned from supporting global health care organizations and applying it to improve vaccination efforts in its local community and around the world. It is vital that communities across the globe join together to do their part to beat COVID-19.
