By Robert L. Moore, MD, MPH, MBA, Chief Medical Officer
“I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”
-Dr. Bernard Rieux in The Plague, by Albert Camus
August has not been a good month in our PHC counties.
Another summer of massive wildfires and poor air quality. Another surge of COVID, this time hitting the rural northern counties with particular severity. For several hospitals, their ICUs and Emergency Departments are full. Patients are being transferred hundreds of miles south, to hospitals that still have capacity. Many hospitals report they have no open mammogram or colonoscopy appointments for the rest of the year.
PCP offices are short staffed, as the sheer number of COVID cases leads to illness, but also to quarantines affecting a larger proportion of staff. Telephone and video visits are on the rise again. A state requirement that all health care providers require their staff to be vaccinated will lead to additional staffing stress for many of you. The staff that are able to work are exhausted; you are working so hard to keep them from burning out.
In the midst of all this, we at PHC are impressed with your dedication to take care of your populations, with testing and vaccination efforts both in your offices and in your larger communities. You are partnering with our public health colleagues, your local hospitals, and with trusted community-based-organizations to respond in an organized, professional and compassionate way to the many simultaneous stresses you are facing.
PHC is here to support you with advocacy and resources to support these efforts. In the coming weeks we will be offering incentive opportunities for primary care providers to increase the vaccination rate in the PHC population, and to capture vaccination information missing from state registry databases. In the coming week, PHC will also be offering grants to community organizations in every one of our counties to increase vaccinations among the most vulnerable populations. We will be making calls, handing out gift cards to members as they get vaccinated, funding local media campaigns, and asking pharmacies to remind their customers of the option of getting vaccinated while picking up their prescriptions. The September monthly newsletter will have more details.
Balancing Boosters
As the federal government has signaled an intention to approve a booster dose of COVID vaccination for those at least eight months post-vaccination, many of you are worried about this overwhelming your capacity. Remember, those vaccinated early, especially health care workers, have more agency than more vulnerable patients. Community pharmacies have a large amount of untapped vaccination capacity: where possible, you may want to steer those who know how to make on-line reservations and keep appointments to pharmacies for their boosters, and save your in-office capacity for those who are actually in your offices at the moment, or for specific outreach events.