LYNN — All Care VNA and Hospice received the Moderna vaccine to begin vaccinating all employees, including direct care and administrative staff, at its Lynn headquarters on Market Street.
The state Department of Public Health (DPH) provided All Care with 300 doses of the vaccine to be administered over the next week. It will be distributing the second dose in early March.
“Knowing that our staff will be protected with the vaccine gives us a sense of relief,” said Jo Mary Koopman, senior vice president of operations at All Care as well as a RN, BSN and MBA.
All Care has transformed the large first floor conference room into a vaccine clinic and has trained staff in administration and data collection for the state, all in accordance with the DPH guidelines.
The care facility’s frontline staff has treated more than 500 COVID-19 patients in the last year.
“We are thrilled to be able to provide the COVID-19 vaccine to our employees,” said Koopman. “Our frontline nurses, therapists, social workers, chaplains, and home care aides are delivering essential care in the community and are in and out of many patients’ homes daily.”
Maureen Collier, clinical director, and Mary Ellen Dawley, director of quality improvement, collaborated on the coordination of the vaccine program. The program follows Massachusetts’ three-phase vaccination distribution plan, allowing all healthcare workers, including home-based healthcare workers, and non-COVID-facing healthcare workers to be eligible to be vaccinated. This is the last group to receive the vaccine in Phase 1. Facilities that planned to vaccinate more than 200 individuals could apply to the state to request the vaccine.
“We applied at the beginning of January to administer the vaccine on-site to our employees,” Dawley said. “We were so happy to get the notification that we would be receiving an allotment of the vaccine on February 2.”
All Care VNA and Hospice is a Medicare/Medicaid-certified agency that offers services including nurses, home health aides, specialists in geriatrics, oncology, diabetes, physical, occupational, and speech therapies, as well as palliative care.
The care facility believes that vaccines are an important step in the fight against COVID-19 and said it is committed to ensuring that its staff are vaccinated as soon as possible.
