Efforts to build and manage a huge vaccination workforce for Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire ICS have been shortlisted for a prestigious Staffing Solution of the Year HSJ Partnership Awards.
Matt Edwards, Director of Clinical Workforce Transformation, said: “This is great news as it recognises the success of the incredible efforts we made with our partners Medacs and BOB ICS just over a year ago to get everything in place to deliver much-needed Covid vaccinations to hundreds of thousands of people.
“The team built a huge workforce in less than three weeks over the 2020-21 Christmas break. The workforce model we used was designed to be flexible and ensure we could increase numbers to quickly meet new demands at the mass vaccination centres and to support primary care and pharmacies across the BOB system.
“This put us at the top of the league table across the South East for vaccine delivery as a percentage of the local population.
“The model safeguarded core NHS services as the workers were new to the system and we did not draw on any key workers. Our model worked so well that it was then shared to the other five ICS across the South East of England allowing them to benefit to access to a quality workforce in a timely and responsive manner.
“Oxford Health played a major role in the delivery of the vaccine service across these areas by also providing the necessary training to ensure that the staff being supplied were fully compliant.
“A number of staff attracted to work on the vaccine programme have now transferred over to work on delivering business as usual services.
“BOB ICS was also the first region in England to get vaccinations in schools up and running and the teams have worked tirelessly through yet another Christmas break to ensure boosters could be rolled out with equal speed and efficiency.
“This is a great opportunity to recognise all those who helped to get everything in place and to also shine the spotlight on the staff who do so much every day to keep things running smoothly.”
This year’s award ceremony takes place on 24 March.
Published: 14 February 2022