Approved Hospital Formulary
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Approved Hospital Formulary
08/05/21 sh Pfizer COVID Vaccine in MAIN Emergency Department
August 6, 2021
From: "Steven Higginbotham" <steven.higginbotham@hhsys.org>
To: "PharmTechs Main Central" <maincentral.pharmtechs@hhsys.org>, "Pharmacists" <grp_allpharm@hhsys.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 5, 2021 2:47:19 PM
Subject: Pfizer COVID Vaccine in MAIN Emergency Department
Beginning today, the Pfizer COVID vaccine will be offered to patients/family members of patients being discharged from the Main Emergency Department.
Below are a few things that you need to know:
Ordering
- A physician order will be required to administer the COVID vaccine in the Main ED. These orders should auto-verify, but if any do not, please let Pharm IT and myself know.
- ED nursing staff will use a new ED-COVID 19 vaccine powerform to ensure that the patient meets the appropriate criteria to receive the vaccine.
- The COVID vaccine should only be ordered in the Main ED. As of today, we are NOT routinely offering the COVID vaccine to patients outside of the Main ED.
- Please contact me, AMT, or someone else in pharmacy leadership if you receive an order for the COVID vaccine outside of the ED. We will coordinate with Quality Management and Employee Health to determine if the patient qualifies to get the vaccine while in the hospital.
Preparation
- Once diluted, the vaccine has a 6 hour expiration time.
- PSP will draw up individual vaccine doses in syringes every day at 0300, 0900, 1500 and 2100.
Dispensing
- Pfizer COVID vaccine will only be loaded in the POD C Pyxis.
- A technician from Central Pharmacy will pick up the vaccine from PSP every day at 0300, 0900, 1500 and 2100 and will immediately take them to POD C to refill Pyxis.
- The "M" will be responsible for refilling Pyxis at 0300
- The "1" will be responsible for refilling Pyxis at 0900 and 1500
- The "6" will be responsible for refilling Pyxis at 2100
- When refilling Pyxis, use the OUTDATE function to remove all of the expired/expiring soon vaccines from the drawer and use the REFILL function to add the new vaccine syringes. This is an important step as we are trying to accurately track how many syringes are expiring each day.
- Return all expired syringes to Central Pharmacy and place them in a sharps container.
- Contact PSP to make another batch of syringes if there is a STOCKOUT in-between the normal 0300, 0900, 1500 and 2100 refill times.
- When refilling Pyxis, all previously made vaccine syringes should be removed from the pocket regardless of when they were made.
Let me know if you have any questions.