Southlake Regional Health Centre is apologizing for long outdoor lines and wait times at the vaccination clinic in Newmarket, after a computer system brought the whole operation to a crawl on Thursday.
Director of community programs and partnerships Gayle Seddon said no one wanted to see seniors waiting in line outside during the winter and that steps have been taken to prevent it from happening again.
"I just want to apologize to our community for what we experienced yesterday; it was not our intention," said Seddon at a Town of Newmarket community meeting about vaccinations hosted by Mayor John Taylor today.
"I apologize profusely on behalf of myself and my team."
Mayor John Taylor noted that Southlake took on the responsibility of operating the clinic to allow York Region Public Health to use its resources in other areas despite having an entire hospital of its own to run.
"It was a difficult day yesterday, but I think it's important for people to know that Southlake would not typically be in this role right now," he said.
"We have only been able to do this because of Southlake, public health and everyone else working together to get everyone over 80 vaccinated quickly and safely."
On Friday, things appeared to be running as smoothly as the hospital had hoped. Seddon said that able-bodied residents were able to get through the vaccination process in about 45 minutes, and people requiring assistance were usually out the door in 90 minutes.
There were no lines outside of the clinic on Friday, and several staff members from the Town of Newmarket were outside the Ray Twinney Recreational Complex, managing arrivals and helping people get inside the clinic quickly and safely.
"The town has really stepped up and partnered with us amazingly," Seddon told NewmarketToday.
Aside from holding open doors and providing physical assistance and wheelchairs, the most important thing the town workers did was advise people to not get out of their cars if they had arrived more than 10 minutes before their scheduled appointment.
Seddon said that people arriving more than 10 minutes early greatly slows the process. So residents are being asked to wait in their warm cars or go get a coffee and come back later if they are too early.
"This is a mass vaccination clinic, which means we are looking to move 1,000 people or more through it per day. One of the key things for that is to keep people moving at a very standardized and predictable rate," she said.
"If people come an hour before their appointment, then they are interfering with the appointments of all of the other individuals scheduled then.
"So we want people to arrive just before check-in time and move through the clinic as efficiently as possible."
Inside the clinic, Seddon said they also brought in more staff to provide vaccinations, opened up a second ice pad to allow for more space for waiting inside, and had employees from the province working overnight to fix the technology problems that caused the long delays.
According to Seddon, the clinic uses two different computer programs to manage appointments. One is a scheduling system, and the other is a provincial client management program called COVAX ON, which Seddon describes as "the electronic heartbeat of the clinic."
The problem on Thursday was that data was unable to upload from one system to the other.
As a result, all of the personal information provided to the scheduling system when people booked their appointments had to be entered manually into COVAX ON at the tables where people got their shots, slowing the process significantly as more and more people arrived outside for their appointments.
"In the future, the scheduling system and COVAX ON will be one and the same, but right now, they are separate, and we have to send data from one to the other, and that's where we had some challenges," said Seddon.
The province is launching the new system, along with a centralized call centre, on March 15. Seddon said they will cautiously implement it once it is clear the new system can handle the demand that will be placed on it.
It is not clear yet how the new system may impact booking appointments.
