Temporary healthcare services for crisis response: organization and management of a mass vaccination center
Authors: Ovretveit John , Ohrling Mikael 
Published: August 2023

Purpose

Scientific description of the organization and management of a temporary large scale healthcare (T-LSHc) vaccination clinic and evidence-based guidance for future temporary healthcare (T-Hc) services.

Design/methodology/approach

Mixed-methods rapid feedback case study, using interviews, document analysis and quantitative data, with both data collection and analysis guided by a research-informed systems program theory of the clinic.

Findings

Private contractors were not willing to bid for contracts to set up and close a T-LSHc vaccination clinic in 2022, although they had done so earlier in the year. The public health system was able successfully to set up and run the clinic itself for 2 months, serving 3,000 people a day at its peak. Part of the success was because a dedicated unit to set up and run T-Hc services had been created in 2020. The Stockholm organization model differed from the Milan model by using information technology to reduce the need for a large number of on-site doctors.

Research limitations/implications

There may be recall bias in interview data as interviews were carried out four months after the closing of the clinic. The conclusions apply to clinically simple but managerially complex T-Hc services but are limited to public healthcare systems operating in a similar context to that of the case study service. The study contributes to the new science of healthcare crisis organization and management and fills gaps in knowledge in disaster medicine for enduring and fluctuating health crises. The findings show the importance of a capacity to establish and manage T-Hc, and of the specialist management and HIT competence that health systems will need to build to meet the crises that threaten our health, both now and in the future.

Practical implications

Public healthcare systems can provide clinically simple and managerially complex T-Hc services quickly and successfully if they have experience and capacity to plan and set up such services, skilled operational managers respected by staff, staff who can be redeployed, and suitable health information technology.

Social implications

The need for healthcare services to respond to crises is likely to increase in the future. Information for creating the service may be limited at first and changing. The exact nature of the health threat may be uncertain, as may the demand and needs of subpopulations and individuals. The study findings can help to respond quickly to reduce morbidity illness and death through creating and organizing temporary large-scale public healthcare services when existing services cannot be reorganized to meet the scale of the need.

Originality/value

This article is the first detailed empirical description and analysis of a large-scale temporary healthcare service operated by the primary care division of an integrated public healthcare system, with research informed guidance for future services of this type in similar contexts. This article compares two organization models of T-LSHc services, and contributes to an emerging subdiscipline of the organization and management of disaster and crisis healthcare.