Detroit City Mass Vaccination Site Template
Our Emergency Medicine Supervisor Dr. Andrew Leaman took the initiative to work with his fellow colleagues and Park Emergency Medicine Supervisors Dr. Jeffrey Van Laere, Dr. Matthew Ball and Dr. Howard Klausner to write a very important document that was published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Robert Dunne, Interim Medical Director for the City of Detroit, oversaw the entire TCF Mass Vaccination operation in Detroit. Our staff worked very closely with Dr. Dunne and the Detroit East Medical Control Authority to produce the following publication. The goal of this publication is to describe the City of Detroit Mass Vaccination Site and its methods of recruitment, enrollment, site selection, and logistics. With this publication, Dr. ‘s Leaman, Van Laere, Ball, Klausner, and other authors, successfully provided a template to other communities on how to implement a mass vaccination site. This will be useful to communities around the world in the event of another outbreak or global pandemic of a highly infectious disease.
“During a pandemic, the increased number of patients seeking acute medical care places a heightened burden on hospitals and clinics. That burden can be mitigated by providing mass testing, vaccination, or medication dispensing in nontraditional settings. Drive through sites can serve as an ideal strategy during respiratory pandemics, as there is minimal contact between the patient/vaccine recipient, other patients/vaccine recipients, and the staff working at the center. This limited contact decreases exposure risk and prevents the site from having the unintended consequence of becoming a super spreader event. Additionally, handling requirements for some COVID-19 vaccines, such as low temperature refrigeration, make large, consolidated off site vaccination centers particularly attractive. Accordingly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the city of Detroit utilized TCF Convention Center as a high volume drive through vaccination site. The drive through mass vaccination center that we describe in this document is meant to serve as a template for others faced with similar pandemic needs and can be modified/scaled depending on the needs in that particular setting.”
Please take a moment to read more about our COVID pandemic work here. Our emergency medicine physician Dr. Erin Brenner takes you on a video tour of the Detroit TCF vaccination site.
Clinical Services in the Pharmacy During COVID-19
Prior to the introduction of the COVID-19 Vaccine, our CEO Ghada Abdallah recognized a unique opportunity for community pharmacies to grow their practice. With her experience from the Park Pharmacies (regional chain of pharmacies she owned for over a decade), she had an insight. The Park Pharmacies offered a full immunization clinic and point-of-care testing clinic. Pharmacy based immunization clinics offer a full array of immunizations to adults and children. Point of care testing clinics in the pharmacy allow the pharmacist to test an individual who is having symptoms for an infectious disease and then dispense the appropriate medication when needed. She realized with the emergence of a new infectious disease such as COVID-19 that community pharmacies were uniquely positioned to provide testing vaccination for COVID-19.