Drive-thru at Devon a great success

Devon Medical delivered its first COVID-19 vaccination clinic on 10 August, vaccinating 17 people over a period of two hours. Fast forward two weeks, and a nationwide lockdown – and Devon are now completing 144 doses in a seven hour shift..

“When the shift to Alert Level 4 was announced we split our clinical staff into two teams. We have one team dedicated to vaccination work, which we are now doing in our car park as a drive through clinic. This is supported by our admin team who are strongly focused on calling our patients and booking them in for a vaccination,” says GP and practice owner Dr Pat Leary.

“The other clinical team works inside the clinic completing routine general practice work, including taking COVID-19 swabs. Keeping the staff in clear teams is part of our infection control protocol, working to keep our patients and teams safe during the outbreak.”

Devon Medical quickly pivoted in order to ramp up their vaccination efforts. They’ve also taken a continuous improvement approach, learning and tweaking their processes as they go.

“Day one of car park vaccination was a really great day. The team had such a positive attitude to trying something new and our patients were really supportive and happy to be there getting their vaccination,” says Dr Leary.

“I’d also like to thank Pinnacle for helping us with our drive through clinic design, plus supporting us with a couple of extra people to help with observation and data entry. Having them on board has helped us to evaluate what we are doing and fine tune our operation. We are also appreciative of Lisa Gilbert from the DHB team. Her work on the logistics and technology side of things has been invaluable.”