MedStar Brings COVID-19 Vaccines to Underserved
with Innoculate by Luminare
By: Natalie Cheng
When the pandemic hit, MedStar Mobile Healthcare was affected in a couple different areas. As an administrative governmental agency that provides emergency and non-emergency ambulances as well as world class mobile healthcare, MedStar has helped people across the state of Texas in COVID response. The agency had to deal with very sick patients, passengers of the Crown Princess cruise ship that were infected with COVID, and sick patients that lived down in the valley of Texas while dealing with 20% of their own employees getting COVID. When the vaccine became available, MedStar identified a gap in vaccine distribution and decided to deliver vaccines to underserved communities. MedStar handled all the registrations, scheduling, and data reporting manually, which became very inefficient and time-consuming. For every piece of paper collected at sites, 5+ minutes was spent on data entry, filing, sorting, and deciphering handwriting. Another person had to be brought on just to concentrate on reporting vaccine data to ImmTrac2. MedStar had to manage counts at sites, how many vaccines were given, and making sure people showed up for appointments. The organization couldn’t accurately forecast demand with many cancellations or no-shows. The organization needed a better way to handle all these manual processes and were growing frustrated with cancellations.
“Innoculate is a platform that accelerated the entire vaccination process. From the customer and administrative standpoints, it made it easier. The overall management of operations became more efficient and effective. Innoculate simplified everything.” – Michael Potts, CCEMT-P, Emergency Management Administrator
MedStar had heard about the successes of various counties using Innoculate, an automated vaccine management solution, and ended up talking to the Luminare team. The MedStar team chose Innoculate because the software was very easy to use, met all the requirements including user registration and reporting, and was a solution that was ready to go right out of the box with no customization needed. The benefit of a partnership was rapidly realized and Innoculate was implemented in about a week meeting rigorous new reporting standards for the state of Texas. The team welcomed the technology with open arms. MedStar knew that software serves as an accelerator to a process. When it came to vaccines, they wanted to make sure that they honed down all their processes so if they could have saved a second for the people in need of vaccination, they were going to do it.
The MedStar team conducted just-in-time training with anyone administering the vaccine including the City of Fort Worth firefighters. The team was able to complete training within 2.5 minutes and began administering the vaccines. Because of the unique characteristics of Innoculate and the collaborative nature of the relationship, the MedStar team became more efficient and were able to save a huge amount of labor hours. Instead of taking 5-6 days to administer 700 vaccines, the team can now do all that in 1 day or less. With the Innoculate vaccine management solution, MedStar has been able to efficiently and effectively administer vaccines to underserved communities across the state of Texas.
As the world starts recovering from the pandemic, vaccine administrators can start shifting their focus onto vaccinations as a whole and how to improve upon managing public vaccinations for other viruses and infections such as the flu, meningitis, and pneumonia. Organizations can also start evaluating their tools and processes for overall disaster management and be better prepared for another pandemic or emergency. Is your organization looking for better ways to manage and distribute vaccinations as well as assisting citizens during a pandemic, natural disaster, or public emergency? Reach out to us and we’ll walk you through our solutions to see what best suits your organization’s needs.
