How to Schedule Staff For Your COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Clinics

November 23, 2021

Pharmacies and healthcare facilities everywhere are gearing up to administer COVID-19 booster shots. Providing COVID-19 booster shots to immunocompromised people follows the latest guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CDC recommendation that individuals with a weakened immune system should receive a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Elderly man getting a vaccine at a vaccine clinic.

The FDA ruled that transplant recipients and other immune-compromised patients may get a third dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. A booster plan is still being developed for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The FDA didn’t specify exactly which patients fall into this category, but the CDC listed several categories of people who may qualify, and one thing is for sure: the booster program will encompass a lot of people. While the U.S. health officials have not issued booster vaccines to the general population at this time, pharmacies are still expecting a large surge in vaccination demand, especially as COVID-19 rates continue to rise and flu season is right around the corner.

To meet this demand, vaccination events have increased in popularity. These events range from corporate settings to sports teams or college campuses. Many employers are counting on community clinics to come in and set up vaccination events on-site for their employees. Even if you already have a scheduling process in place, staffing during a pandemic or even a typical flu season can quickly become overwhelming. If you’re still relying on outdated, manual scheduling processes, it may be impossible to keep up.

Workforce planning and staff scheduling optimization will ensure that your vaccine booster clinic staff will be ready. Schedule360 scheduling software can help your facility manage the special staffing demands associated with administering vaccinations. Whether you are vaccinating in your facility or off-site, you can optimize your workforce to fill shifts within your pharmacy or clinic as well as staff any vaccination related events all in one highly configurable platform.

Web-Based Access 24/7

Schedule360 provides real-time, web-based access to schedules and reports 24/7. This is a must for clinics and pharmacies overseeing multiple locations and regions. Scheduling apps can be problematic and need constant updating, but our web-based scheduling software gives admins and staff 24/7 online access to the platform from any mobile device with internet access. 24/7 access to real-time department messages and scheduling needs can reduce time spent on answering schedule-related emails and phone messages, making better use of your valuable resources.

Credential Tracking

Staffing for vaccination events is labor intensive, especially if you’re using outdated scheduling methods. Our scheduling software solution relieves the burden of tracking employee credentials by allowing only qualified staff to fill certain shifts. We help you schedule and manage your regular operations in addition to scheduling on-site vaccination events by giving you a precise overview of which staff members are certified to administer vaccines and who is experienced in vaccination event support, all within the confines of their employee credential profile.

Internal Messaging

Schedule360 software offers secure messaging inside the platform for more effective communication between admins and staff. With segmented internal messaging, administrators can quickly relay critical information to the right people, including any urgent shift coverage needs. A one-click process for dispatching shift-related messages to employees via Cell Phone text, Email, and Message Board makes notifications simple and efficient. This feature keeps track of changes made to shifts and ensures specific, time-stamped communications to keep everyone on the same page, especially when internally communicating during high-volume times.

Cohesive Standard of Operations

Streamline and automate the staff scheduling process even if you have multiple clinics running across multiple locations or regions. With our scheduling software, your schedulers will have complete transparency, giving them the ability to move resources between locations with ease and oversee the schedule from a centralized location. Our pharmacy scheduling software provides accurate shift forecasting of upcoming demands to decrease last minute overtime requests. With configured reporting, you can uncover weekly, daily, and shift level patterns in patient flow so your schedulers can better forecast upcoming needs. With the right scheduling software, schedulers spend less time scheduling. The ability to automate certain scheduling tasks, create templates and guidelines for common scheduling requests, and require OT approval before shift assignments provides a more hands-off approach to this important, yet previously arduous task of creating a pharmacy schedule that really works.

Configured Features Merge with your Current Process

  • Schedule360 can integrate the vaccine clinic into your regular schedule.
  • We can build out new vaccine booster clinic sites specific to your vaccination events outside the pharmacy or clinic, or within your location.
  • Integrate staff (including RN’s or other healthcare providers) into the site for a team vaccination group that performs vaccines, such as large COVID clinic vaccine sites at college campuses. With a centralized scheduling approach, you can create and optimize event schedules while also maintaining adequate support for daily operations.

We’re Here for You

Schedule360 understands the unique complexities of scheduling for vaccination events while still maintaining appropriate staffing and order in your clinic or pharmacy locations to better serve your community needs. We deliver a highly configurable software solution guaranteed to simplify your scheduling process, giving you one less thing to worry about. As your workload to manage it all increases, leverage technology to streamline your current processes. There’s no need to try and completely overhaul your system, because Schedule360 works with what you are already doing and can make it so much easier to manage. Rethink your scheduling process with a configured demo of Schedule360’s award-winning software solution. We Know Scheduling™ Contact us today to learn more.