Public Health and Chatham-Kent EMS are teaming up to help protect some hospital patients against COVID-19.
Health Alliance CEO says the effort focuses on what are known as ‘alternate level of care patients’, someone who either can’t return home to recover or came from a long term care facility.
“So their acute stage is over and they’re ready to go back to that alternate level of care,” Marshall explains. “We were able, through those partnerships, to make sure that everybody in long term care, all those residents, were vaccinated. So we want to make sure anybody being discharged through hospital now with that as their destination, is also vaccinated.”
Marshall says these immunizations not only protect patients at risk, but also improve patient flow to ensure people can safely be transferred from one level of care to another.
“We’ve had a group from EMS working with our staff here to make sure we identify individuals who we believe may be progressing to that next stage, and have been able to get them vaccinated.”
Meantime, EMS staff have also begun offering shots to residents in the community who are homebound or unable to get to the mass vaccination clinic in Chatham.