Since 1st July 2019, GP Practices have worked together in Primary Care Networks sharing expertise and resources over a wider geographical area. Kennet and Avon Medical Practice is part of the East Kennet Primary Care Network along with Ramsbury and Wanborough Surgery, Great Bedwyn Surgery and Burbage Surgery totalling around 35,000 patients.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, we have been working together as a PCN to deliver the Covid Vaccination Programme. To date, here at KAMP we have delivered over 12,500 vaccinations, and across our PCN we have done well over 26,000. Our Team has been absolutely fantastic and we have managed to staff all our Clinics with our own staff (with Clinical and Administrative help from our neighbouring Practices). Each individual Clinic takes hours to setup, searching to find “eligible” patients, sending out invitations, phoning patients, making sure appropriate staff are released from their usual “day job”, organising rotas and setting up the vaccination site ready for patients to arrive. I must also mention our fantastic team of volunteers who have run the car parking service for our clinics. They have worked tirelessly to ensure that people get safely in and out of the vaccination site
We originally committed to vaccinating all our patients within Cohorts 1-9 and completed this ahead of schedule. We have successfully vaccinated all of our elderly, vulnerable patients, their Carers, those with Additional Needs and those at High Clinical Risk.
More recently for the final younger Cohorts, the goal posts have changed and we are reverting back to being sent Pfizer vaccines, which involves the 15 minute post-observation restriction, and means our Clinics have to be slower due to the size of our waiting area. We are also being expected to return to “Business As Usual” providing the contracted NHS services.
With this in mind, and that our staff are becoming increasingly fatigued with having worked so many extra hours in Covid Vaccination Clinics or providing backup for those staff who are redeployed into the Clinics, we do not believe we can continue to safely provide both Covid Clinics and BAU at the same time. We have therefore decided that now is the right time to focus back on providing a full NHS service to our whole patient demographic and cease providing FIRST vaccinations for the future cohorts. The National Booking Service for Covid Vaccinations is now fully operational and it continues to grow with more and more sites being added every week for the younger age groups. We continue with SECOND vaccination clinics until the end of June.
We will stay in contact with you all about any future Covid Vaccination Booster Programme — as yet we have no details on this.
We feel incredibly proud of what we have achieved over the last few months and we are ready to make this next move to returning some sort of normality within our Practice Team.
Thank you to everyone for your support during these last few months and we all hope you keep fit and healthy over the Summer and manage to enjoy some sort of “freedom”.