COVID-19 Vaccination Programme – Practice Statement

As our patients will know, we have started to offer COVID-19 vaccination clinics at Oulton Medical Centre. The administrative team are working incredibly hard to contact as many people as possible to arrange an appointment. Unfortunately, the clinic this Saturday is now fully booked with almost 600 appointments. We want to be able to offer all our patients a vaccine as soon as possible, however, we are restricted to the number of vaccines we have delivered and the amount of people we can see in one day. At present, our focus is on the highest vaccine prioritisation groups but appointments will be opened up to the other groups as soon as possible. We do not have a date for our next available clinic but anticipate that it will be in the very near future.

The practice team continues to communicate with the most vulnerable members of our community to arrange appointments or add them to a waiting list to be called for the next available clinic. The urgency to protect members of our community is felt across our team but we must ask that patients refrain from calling our main practice numbers about the vaccine to avoid the phone lines becoming too busy. People still need to contact us about other urgent medical matters, therefore, please help us help you by avoiding non urgent calls to reduce our phone queues. Visit our website for more information on other ways to contact the team – www.oultonmedicalcentre.co.uk/contact-us.

These are incredibly difficult times for everyone, and our staff are working very hard behind the scenes so please be patient and kind.

Some of our more vulnerable patients may have received a letter from the NHS offering a vaccine at a large immunisation centre. There are centres in Morley, Leeds, Halifax and Manchester that we are aware of. Please note, this is a national scheme and it is not connected to our work in practice. If you are eager to have your vaccine and do not wish to wait for an appointment with us, please utilise these appointments instead. We understand that the distance to travel may be difficult, however, they may be able to see you sooner than we can.

Finally, we want to clarify the reason why some people have an appointment at Oulton Medical Centre and others are being seen at Gibson Lane Practice in Kippax. The Pfizer vaccine must be stored under very specific conditions which we cannot facilitate in practice. Therefore, our clinics currently run through Gibson Lane Practice. As and when we receive deliveries of the Oxford-Astra/Zeneca vaccines, we can offer appointments at Oulton Medical Centre instead because we are able to safely store them. By running clinics at both locations, the team can offer double the amount of vaccines in a shorter space of time. We are incredibly grateful to the Gibson Lane team for allowing us to work from their practice over the past few weeks and moving forward.

Thank you for your understanding and we look forward continuing our work in protecting the community.