Reinstating your practice as a COVID-19 vaccination site
In 2021, the College worked with the Ministry of Health to establish the Primary Care Onboarding Guidelines. These guidelines acknowledged general practices with Foundation standard certification, and significantly reduced the requirements for general practices to become COVID-19 vaccination sites.
This meant general practices could set up as COVID-19 vaccination sites and significantly contribute to the delivery of vaccines to their communities across New Zealand.
More recently, the College has learnt from our membership that some practice’s status as COVID-19 vaccination sites have lapsed and the process for reinstating this is unclear.
The College has sought guidance from Te Whatu Ora who have confirmed that the COVID-19 Vaccines and General Operating Guidance are for all providers and supersedes the previous planning consideration documents including the Primary Care Onboarding Guidelines.
This means practices who want to onboard again to offer COVID-19 vaccines will need to complete Appendix B of the operating guidelines to be reinstated. This is a fairly straightforward process.
There may also be a need for additional training through IMAC, particularly around the bivalent Pfizer vaccine. Practices will need to ensure existing staff are all active in the CIR and any new staff have completed the required training and onboarding.
Any practices wanting to be reinstated are best to reach out to their PHO contacts initially, or email immunisation@health.govt.nz with details of what support or information you require.
For practices who have existing accredited vaccination facility status, the planning considerations for existing accredited vaccination health care facilities applies.
For more information please visit the Manatū Hauora website or contact your Primary Health Organisation.