Thank you for your patience as we wait for additional vaccine supplies. In the forty years that we have cared for the community, ARC has never experienced a vaccination effort of this magnitude and urgency. We understand and share our patients' and the community's wishes to distribute available vaccine quickly and effectively.
As of January 7, ARC has already vaccinated 7,000 healthcare workers, first responders, and high-risk patients. We receive limited allocations of vaccine from the state. Right now, as doses arrive, we are reaching out to our highest-risk patients. Given vaccine availability, we expect it will take more than several weeks to vaccinate those with the greatest need, so we ask for your patience as we work through the priority list.
Here are five key points we would like you to know.
- ARC patients, who have seen us anytime in the last three years, do not have to call us to book a vaccination appointment because we have your information in our electronic medical record. We will contact you via MyChart, email, text, or phone call when we have available doses.
- It will likely take more than several weeks to fully distribute vaccinations to even our highest-risk patients in group 1B.
- You may have to drive to a location other than your usual clinic as we offer large-scale vaccination clinics. At these clinics we can vaccinate more people at one time.
- We are seeing increasing rates of COVID-19 and urge everyone to continue to wear masks, social distance, practice hand hygiene, and avoid crowds.
- Many of your vaccine questions can be answered on our COVID-19 Care page, and you can send us new ones at ARCcontact.com.
The combination of patients seeking care and the demand for the vaccine has overloaded our phones and digital channels, creating longer hold times than usual and slowing down our web site. We are expanding our load capacity to handle the increased digital traffic so we can continue to offer digital solutions. You can help us by referring to our website for updates, so we can keep our phones available for those with immediate medical needs.
We thank you for your patience and wish you good health.