Home Health & Hospice Week

Some agencies are blazing the way, however.

The good news is that Americans confined to their homes are getting increased access to the life-saving COVID-19 vaccine. The bad news is that the health care system isn’t utilizing those most suited for the job to deliver the shots, thus losing efficiency and wider access.

Many government agencies and other types of healthcare providers are furnishing vaccines for homebound citizens, especially seniors.

For example: Boston Medical Center’s Geriatrics Home Care Program, which is centered around physician and nurse practitioner visits in the home, began vaccinating seniors in their homes last month, CNN and Kaiser Health News report. Wake Forest Baptist Health is sending out a physician, nurse, or physician assistant paired with a pharmacy resident to deliver vaccines. In New York, Northwell Health’s House Calls program is sending a physician and social worker to deliver Johnson & Johnson vaccinations to its homebound patients, the New Hyde Park-based health system says in a release.

Other types of vaccine providers include fire department paramedics, National Guard troops and public health department personnel. In West Virginia, Kanawha County Health Director and physician Sherri Young and a county sheriff escort deliver J&J shots to homebound residents, reports STAT News, an affiliate of The Boston Globe.

After a March 23 vote by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the county’s public health department is assessing the needs for in-home vaccinations and will act accordingly, reports the Los Angeles Daily News. “We have to create programs to meet the needs of homebound adults where they live and bring vaccines to them,” said Supervisor Hilda Solis, who introduced the motion. It’s a population that “has been cast aside for too long,” she added, according to the News.

Some home care providers are getting into the vaccination lane, however. University of Wisconsin Health’s Care Direct home care unit has administered 60 Pfizer shots to patients at home, Care Direct Chief Medical Officer Julie Slattery told WBAY News.

But the logistics are far from simple. “As you can imagine, driving to people’s homes and performing their screening, and making sure that it’s safe for them to receive it, and then also staying with the patients for 15 to 30 minutes after to perform observation of them … it takes a lot more time than patients coming through a drive-thru vaccine clinic,” said Slattery. “We have to be really careful and mindful about the direction we’re heading and how far we’re traveling with the vaccine.”

Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Pravea Health is looking at furnishing shots via its home nursing unit, but it’s still working out the procedures. For example, “it’s tricky, because you would think, OK, J&J, you don’t need to freeze it,” Pravea CEO Dr. Ashok Rai told Action 2 News. “But once that vial is punctured, we have to use it in two hours. We have to find five doses in two hours to use. [We’re] working through all of those mechanics, and hopefully soon we’ll be doing homebound patients.”

In West Virginia, Young refrigerates the J&J vaccine vial and thus gets up to six hours to use its doses, STAT News notes.