The way to an injection at the GGD must be simpler and faster. This is the opinion of experts from a group of large companies that have been working on an alternative to the GGD’s appointment system in recent weeks.
A busy telephone line, too few vaccines at certain locations and system malfunctions have made it difficult to scale up vaccination in recent weeks. Their alternative system is much simpler and could prevent those problems, say the logistics experts from ASML, Bol.com and Heineken, and professor of logistics Jan Fransoo.
The experts offered the umbrella organization GGD GHOR and the RIVM to set up this system, but that offer was declined after six weeks of consultation.
Paul Enders, who, as a logistics expert at chip manufacturer ASML, thought about the alternative, thinks this is a shame. “The current system is not flexible. People first receive a letter and then have to make an appointment for which they sometimes have to wait a long time. If you want to increase the willingness to vaccinate among younger people, you have to move to a simpler system.”
Automatically organize people
According to them, the appointment system proposed by the experts is flexible. Anyone, regardless of age, can sign up online for a shot. Only later does the system search for a suitable date and location, which will be sent to the person via, for example, a mail or sms. Enders: “This allows RIVM and GGD to respond better to varying factors, such as disappointing or better than expected deliveries of vaccines, and you do not have to call thousands of people every time something changes.”
Last Thursday, RIVM and GGD set the interval between the first and the second Pfizer injection not wanting to renew, partly because all appointments have to be canceled and rescheduled, which means that the call centers of the GGDs become overloaded.
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In this system, we distribute leftover vaccines with a simple notification to all eligible people.
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Enders sees two more advantages to his alternative system. “If a new vaccine is added, there is no need to send a letter first. People who are registered can be automatically classified.”
Leftover doses of vaccine can also be quickly distributed at the end of the day. “And not through an Excel tea at the GGD location, but through a simple notification to all people who qualify for it.”
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Not all callers scheduled due to busyness
Since last weekend it may itself be online make an appointment with an injection, as soon as it is your year of birth. That weekend, 135,000 of the 400,000 appointments were scheduled in this way. RIVM also sends a letter to the age group whose turn it is. With this letter they can make an appointment themselves by calling the GGD, which hires the Teleperformance call center for this.
Employees of that call center tell News hour that in recent months they were inundated with callers who couldn’t schedule them all, or that they had hardly anything to do for days on end.
The employees also spend a relatively long time with a caller. The long questionnaire to be completed can sometimes take up to half an hour. At the end of March, too few agreements were made at the GGD, partly due to busyness at the telephone line. As a result, the RIVM kept vaccines on the shelf and the vaccination target became not reached.
GGD: problem is lack of vaccine
Still, the system proposed by the logistics experts is not necessary, according to GGD GHOR, a spokesperson said. “Working with a virtual queue assumes that there are too few people who want to be vaccinated. But there is not a shortage of people, but a lack of vaccine.”
According to the Ministry of Health (VWS), the current system is more flexible, because people have a choice of several appointment options. “If you offer one fixed time slot, someone may really not be able to and we are wasting time,” said a spokesman. Which system is used for distributing leftover vaccines, “we will see”.
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More call center agents
This week, Minister Hugo de Jonge of Public Health informed the House of Representatives that the number of employees at the call center has been expanded to about 9,500. And in the CoronIT appointment and registration system, “infrastructural adjustments” have recently been implemented, “to accommodate very large volumes. to be able to cope with test and vaccination appointments “, says GGD GHOR today News hour.
In January, according to the minister, that system would already “work stably, both for registrations and appointments”. But at the beginning of April there were several malfunctions, as a result of which appointments could not be scheduled and vaccination figures were not passed on.
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