Case Study: Using Verified Identity for Smarter COVID-19 Vaccination Sites

Verified identity mobilized thousands of health care workers to vaccinate millions in one state

As state and local governments take on mass COVID-19 vaccination efforts, they need to coordinate thousands of health care workers to administer the vaccine. A state that’s setting the pace on vaccinations for the rest of the country reached out to Merit for support.

The opportunity

Streamline state COVID-19 vaccination efforts by organizing and tracking paid and volunteer medical staff who helped administer shots.

The need

With thousands of health care workers and volunteers deployed to administer vaccines, the state needed a scalable solution to register, verify, and communicate with its medical professionals.
The state also needed to electronically capture the arrival, break, and departure times of their staff at over 70 state-run testing and vaccination sites in order to create an audit trail.

Merit’s solutions

Many health care workers came forward, without recruitment, to volunteer for administering vaccines. The state sought help from Merit to help site health care workers get paid (for those who chose that option), and to facilitate volunteer efforts for the qualified professionals who chose to do so.
Merit supported the state emergency management agency, helping with volunteer health care workers by:

• Enabling time tracking so the state could submit volunteer hours for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reimbursement.
• Hosting and maintaining forms for registration and availability to make it easier to register, communicate, and track time.
• Automating the dissemination of volunteers’ availability to 100 county directors and volunteer coordinators through a user-friendly dashboard, with oversight at the state agency.
• Digitally verifying volunteer nurses’ credentials, contact-free – as some licenses were expired or needed to be reviewed for safety and security.

Merit supported the efforts for paid professionals by:

• Providing an independent time-tracking solution that ensured accurate recording of hours
• Hosting a dashboard to show all clerical and medical staff who were live on the scene
• Generating automated reports, eliminating the need to compile and review timesheets

The result

In the first couple of months, Merit:

• Tracked over 150,000 hours for health care professionals at vaccination sites across the state
• Supported over 1,000 deployed medical staff per week

Merit saved the state time and effort

When it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations, time is of the essence. Merit’s platform is pre-built and ready to go with no customization required. In this instance, Merit deployed the platform in 9 days. The platform and supportive services streamlined several processes, freeing up the state to focus on getting constituents vaccinated.
Processes that were once manual were automated by Merit’s platform, which provided more trustworthy, reliable data. Accurate time tracking ensured the state would get reimbursed by FEMA for volunteer health care professionals’ work.
Merit also provided complete, high-touch onboarding of all parties and a battle-tested marketing plan to drive education and adoption among the health care workers. This included a suite of training manuals, videos, campaigns, emails, online support, and a dedicated, 24/7, multilingual customer support line.

Solutions for a better vaccine rollout

The COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout is unprecedented, but verified identity technologies can remove critical barriers in the process – including accurately tracking the phases of eligibility for at-risk populations. Here’s how to make your state or local vaccine rollout operate efficiently.

1. Automated time tracking

• Contactless digital check-in/check-out/QR code with receipts for site health care workers
• Accurate tracking ensures proper pay and/or proper volunteer hours reimbursement from FEMA

2. Verified digital credentials

• Instantly and contactlessly confirm health care professionals’ credentials are up-to-date and recognized in your state
• Verify constituents’ eligibility for receiving the vaccine based on the state's vaccine phases and the person's occupation and other risk factors

3. Automated reports

• See raw time-tracking results at the individual, event, and check-in levels
• Consult a dashboard to see how many checked in/checked out in near real-time
• Ensure accurate billing by checking time-tracking reports against invoices received from staffing agencies

4. Verified Vaccine Merit

• Support the safer reopening of service sector businesses and in-office work
• Help families to meet safely again
• Ensure first vaccine doses are not wasted
• Enable second vaccine dose reminders to support herd immunity efforts

To learn more about Merit for Emergency Services click here or email help@merits.com.