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Mass vaccination efforts are picking up steam, particularly with the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine entering the market.
As of mid-March, about half (49 percent) of Premier member health systems surveyed have received the J&J vaccine.
Throughout the pandemic, Premier has been convening a forum of pharmacy leaders from its member health systems across the nation to discuss trends and challenges related to COVID-19 - and strategize around vaccine best practices and improved rollout strategies. Last week, Premier surveyed member pharmacy leaders to get a pulse on how J&J vaccine receipt and rollout is going, with insights shared below.
Where we stand today with U.S. vaccinations:
1. The J&J vaccine is enabling mass vaccination of teachers, community groups and at-risk populations.
The J&J vaccine is a single-dose, refrigerated product, versus a frozen type like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. This has the potential to ease certain logistics concerns and create a more amicable rollout in rural and remote areas that may lack cold-chain storage capabilities.
As a result, nearly 60 percent of Premier members are using the J&J vaccine in mass vaccination settings, including community vaccination clinics, churches and places of religious worship, and homeless shelters. In Michigan, for example, 90 percent of the initial statewide J&J vaccine allocation went to local health departments, and with this influx of product, counties need help from area health systems to get shots in arms.
Examples of deployment of the J&J vaccine include:
2. Vaccine availability remains the biggest challenge, and providers are coming up with ways to prevent waste.
The availability of three COVID-19 vaccines in one year since the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic is a remarkable scientific achievement. And recently, the Biden Administration announced that the U.S. will now have enough vaccines for every adult (260 million people) by the end of May, two months earlier than previous estimates.
While this added and accelerated supply is welcome news, more than half (54 percent) of Premier members continue to report that vaccine availability remains their greatest challenge. With current patient demand for COVID-19 vaccines outpacing supply, members need product in-hand as soon as possible to kick their vaccination efforts into over-drive.
Recent polling suggests a continued drop in the vaccine-hesitant population overall as more and more people get vaccinated - however, the pharmacy leaders agreed that many patients want the ability to choose which vaccine they receive, which is problematic with the current rollout strategy.
Many health systems have developed waitlists since the vaccines were made available three months ago; one pharmacy leader discussed leveraging their waitlist, and a backup waitlist, to quickly identify patients willing to receive a vaccine, further leveraging the J&J product to limit waste of precious supply.
Regardless of which vaccine is being scheduled, these waitlists are vital for health systems who have a certain number of doses prepped and need to manage against patient no-shows. Some providers are also scheduling certain vaccine products on specific days and informing patients at scheduling which product will be available in that clinic by date.
Premier continues to advocate for critical action to overcome vaccine hesitancy, including:
3. Puncturing a J&J vial starts a two-hour countdown, and members have figured out how to optimize the clock.
With hospitals used to receiving the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines at frozen temperatures and with a different set of logistics considerations, Premier pharmacy leaders are sharing best practices on J&J vaccine storage and temperature-window timing.
After first puncturing a vial, the J&J vaccine can be held for up to six hours refrigerated or at room temperature (up to 77°F) for up to two hours, whereas the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines retain viability at room temperature for up to six hours after reconstitution (Pfizer) or first vial puncture (Moderna).
To accommodate these tighter timeframes for the J&J vaccine, 35 percent of Premier members polled are using runners to optimize timing and logistics for doses at room temperature. Half of these health systems are also leveraging their pharmacy teams to pre-draw the vaccine and/or help administer at the point of use.
For example, one pharmacy leader described in detail their efforts to operationalize:
“Our nursing staff completes all screening up to midnight and generates our J&J vaccine order for the next business day via our electronic health record (EHR) platform. Our morning-shift pharmacy team will then sort and prepare doses based on the geography of our facilities - batching doses in increments of five and personally delivering them in a cooler that notes the six-hour expiration. When nursing takes the vaccine out of the cooler for prep and administration, our process is to put a two-hour timestamp on individual doses and administer those doses first pulled per the timestamp.”
As we work to speed a path toward COVID-19 immunity, Premier continues to share the latest education, best practices and solutions - working closely with our members to help ensure vaccination efforts run as smoothly as possible.
Premier members can:
Further reading.
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