The Family Health Center of Worcester is working to make sure its caregivers and patients receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
So far, 66% of employees at the Community Health Center have been vaccinated.
Nearly 5,500 of their patients are eligible to receive the vaccine right now, but they’ve only been able to vaccinate about 600 because of the amount of vaccines they’re receiving from the state.
Family Health Center is reaching out to patients directly and setting up appointments for them.
“We wanted to make it fair and equitable and get our highest risk patients. So we have arranged the registries by number of comorbidities, so if you’re 80-years-old and have five comorbidities as opposed to one, and that means things like diabetes, COPD, a smoker, things like that, if you have a higher number of comorbidities you were going to get called first. Just to try to make it fair and equitable and get our highest risk patients taken care of first,” said Brenda Tsuchiya, Director of Advance Practice Clinicians at Family Health Center of Worcester.
Community Health Centers typically serve high-risk populations.
The Kennedy Community Health Center in Worcester was chosen to receive vaccines from the federal government and has to complete some paperwork before any doses can arrive.
Video Link:
https://spectrumnews1.com/ma/worcester/news/2021/02/23/community-health-center-vaccine-appointments
Olivia Lemmon
Spectrum News 1
