Robust vaccination resources ready to go, but overlooked
We hesitate to add yet another voice to the chorus of criticism for coronavirus vaccine distribution, but as a long-time primary care pediatric practice, we feel the need to speak out and offer our services.
We were struck over the past few days by the comments from politicians lamenting the fact that the vaccine roll-out has been “as incomprehensible as it has been inexcusable.” We agree, as we are, even today, still working to find vaccine to protect our own frontline clinical staff.
U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, RUtah, suggests we should enlist “every medical professional, retired or active, who is not currently engaged in the delivery of care. This could include veterinarians, combat medics and corpsmen, medical students, EMS professionals, first responders, and many others who could be easily trained to administer vaccines.”
Our policymakers appear to be overlooking a very robust resource that already exists in our communities — primary care pediatric and adult medical practices.
Annapolis Pediatrics has been providing exceptional pediatric care to Annapolis and the surrounding community for over 70 years and vaccination has always been a central function. In fact, while we greatly curtailed our operations with the stay-at-home orders in March, we continued to see young children for essential well-child care and vaccinations, hoping to prevent a second pandemic of disease we have already conquered.
In all of our five offices, we have an ongoing system of trained professionals who administer 15,000 Influenza vaccines over a three-month period every fall — this year most were performed in drive-through vaccination clinics in our parking lots. Overall, we administer 115,000 vaccines to children throughout the year and have been doing this for 70 years.
In addition to just performing injections, primary care medical practices counsel patients regarding vaccinations, manage the rare reactions that may occur and provide follow up.
Health departments are underfunded and understaffed, pharmacies are new to vaccine administration, and hospital staff are overworked providing sick care. There is no question that local health departments should be funded well enough to ramp up this service quickly, but in a crisis situation, this will not happen soon enough.
These systems are the ones being asked to initiate set-up for a massive vaccination campaign. Pediatricians have been running a massive vaccination campaign for decades.
One happy fringe benefit of distance learning and social distancing is a reprieve from the typical onslaught of other viral illness in children this winter. Like pediatric practices around the country, our current patient volumes are about 80% of our usual winter sick volumes.
While we hope to someday soon have a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine approved for our pediatric patients, pediatricians would be wellpositioned now to help with the adult vaccination effort (we would even consider offering the traditional after-shot lollipop).
Primary care providers have long felt like the over-looked specialty in our American health care system. We are constantly fighting for fair treatment and reimbursement from insurance companies, and we don’t perform glamourous life-saving procedures.
We implore those who can make a difference to not overlook us now, as we could help rapidly distribute the life-saving vaccine that is now available, without needing to train anyone new. We would simply need flexibility with insurance networks to be able to recoup a reasonable administration charge for patients who do not normally see us (not as easy as one would think!) and some communication and coordination from government agencies distributing vaccine.
It will continue to be our privilege to work together with our community in order to provide exceptional care to every person, adult and child, as we have been doing for decades.
Katherine Edwards, MD, is the medical director of Annapolis Pediatrics. James Rice, MD, is president of the Annapolis-based practice.