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Christus Mother Frances partners with NET Health
Providing Covid-19 outreach clinic
NET Health will partnering with Christus Mother Frances to provide a Covid outreach clinic in a tent at the Sulphur Springs Hospital. From left, Russell Hopkins, Director of NET Health Emergency Public Health Preparedness; Gabriela Camacho-McAdoo, BSN, RN Operations and Logistics Chief: Covid-19 Division; Sha Morgan, RN; Holly Ragan, Senior Market Development Representative; Tanna Holland, RN Administrative Director of Nursing; Lekisha Burns, LVN and Keith Kelley, RN Administative Director of Nursing. Not pictured - Cassi Van Der Jagt, RN.
Christus Mother Frances of Sulphur Springs have partnered with the North East Texas Public Health to distribute vaccines in Sulphur Springs.
A temporary well-equipped tent has space for 10-14 persons. The vaccine clinic will be held in the MMU tent located in the parking lot north (between Dr. Arnecke and Podiatry offices)at the hospital.
Russell Hopkins, NET Health’s Public Health Preparedness official, along with Gabriela Camacho-McAdoo, BSN, RN the NET Heath Operations an Logictics Chief: COVID-19 Division,l were on hand Monday at the tent.
“Basically, we’re partnering with Christus Mother Frances and offering the pediatric vaccine once a week, starting next week every 28 days,” Camacho-McAdoo said. “We’re offering education and an outreach to persons in Hopkins County, which is part of the 22 counties we cover.”
Hopkins said, “We’re part of a want to provide education to persons who have misinformation. We’re a sub-contractor across these 22 counties.
"That allows us to look at people have trouble with transportation and don’t have access to a drug store or Wal-Mart for the vaccine. We’ll go to those communities. We have partnered with another group to be available at places where they have a high concentration of non-English speaking workers. We have translators and will go out into the hispanic community and we can give shots on the site. Most of the work is collecting data.," he said.
Hopkins said, “But we have the opportunity to do shots (vaccines) right now and that might be their only chance. We’re starting to pack small amounts and give them out as we can. By the end of November, the data coming from this area, you’ll see adjustment to our messaging. It will fit better.”
Holly Ragan, Senior Marketing Development Representative said, “We are grateful for the partnership with NET Health. It helps support us when we don’t really have the volume of people seeking vaccines that we once did. As those numbers declined, we still had to pull staff away and inject those and do the paperwork. This allows us to unload that to Net Health and be better stewards of our time. They can come at a frequency to get vaccinated, we won’t have to set aside time to do vaccines. We had over 300 a week, but they have declined and with NET Health we can bridge that gap and let local people get vaccinated, but we won’t have to pull away from our staffing which is already stretched.”
Vaccines will be given 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. the days the tent is staffed. It is also possible, for us to go out into the community and administer vaccines as needed," Camacho-McAdoo said,
Camacho-McAdoo said. “We’re offering education and an outreach. We've done visits to the home bound before. We want to be accessible to the community. We are also gathering research which will help us in the future."
Hopkins said, "We're very flexible and eager to put out a large effort to meet the needs of East Texas.
To get more information call Holly Ragan, Christus Mother Frances at 903-885-3181. See schedule in story above.