Access Community Health Centers

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Keeping Our Patients Safe

March 2022

Even though variants are increasing COVID cases throughout our community, we continue to work to ensure our patients are safe when they visit our clinics.

We’re proud to have provided the vaccine to over 7,500 individuals. We continue to provide COVID vaccines in clinic during the day, but also have held a number of evening and weekend clinics throughout the fall and winter and will do so into the spring. These clinics are open to all eligible patients and families. Please check our website for dates and times for future weekend and weeknight clinics.

Additionally, we have instituted the following COVID safety measures:

  • We have instituted the COVID vaccine requirement for staff.
  • We have implemented numerous safety and infection control practices which have been extremely effective at minimizing the spread of COVID within the clinics.
  • The call center and registration staff screen patients and encourage people with symptoms to schedule telemedicine appointments with their provider or to schedule an appointment for after their quarantine/isolation period ends.
  • We have a sustainable supply of PPE, including face shields and N95 masks and require all staff who have direct patient contact to wear them to minimize the risk of infection.

Keep Up the Good Work
It is a good time to continue with the other effective infection control practices we’ve put in place, including:

  • Practice good hand hygiene technique.
  • Social distancing when possible.
  • Self-symptom monitoring and staying home when sick.

Thank you for your support, patience and understanding as we navigate the pandemic. We will get through this together!

Message from Ken Loving, MD

July 2021

As we make our way through the pandemic, we continue to update our care to best meet the needs of our patients. In fact, the ability to do so throughout the pandemic has made us a stronger organization than we were one year ago. In the coming year, we will continue to evolve and improve our care in the following ways:

More vaccinations. We will continue to reach out to patients to schedule vaccinations through text messaging and/or calling, and now have the ability to vaccinate patients during their scheduled medical appointments. This is especially important now that we are receiving the Pfizer vaccine that offers us the ability to vaccinate our patients from the ages of 12-17. We are proud to have been able to vaccinate hundreds of people who are providing support to communities of color through local non-profits including The Hmong Institute, One City Schools and Centro Hispano. We will continue this work in the future.

Growing to serve more people. We want everyone in our community to have access to preventive care, COVID testing, vaccinations, and all that our unique health care home has to offer. We will grow to better meet the demand for our services from people without health insurance. We’re now using Epic Wisdom as our electronic dental record software which will help us expand our dental practice and better integrate our medical and dental services. Our strong and resourceful behavioral health team will use telehealth initiatives to improve and expand our substance use disorder treatment services. The opioid epidemic continues, and overdoses and deaths are climbing once again. We have the ability to provide medication assisted treatment to patients and will expand those services to help others in the community.

Vaccine Update

July 2021

At the start of summer, 66 percent of people in Dane County have received one dose of the COVID vaccine, and 57 percent have completed the vaccine series. We are proud of the significant role Access has played in this effort. We have vaccinated thousands of people, including patients, community members and staff, and our work continues.

Access continues to hold our daily vaccine clinics, offering the Moderna vaccine as well as the Pfizer vaccine to those who request it. We have also started offering the Pfizer vaccine to adolescent patients ages 12-17. Initially, we are focusing on providing the Pfi zer vaccine to adolescent patients who are already in the clinic for appointments, but will also be launching a broader outreach campaign in the coming weeks. We will continue to add options for our patients as they become available.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, we are committed to meeting the needs of our patients and our community.

Compassion · Inclusion · Stewardship · Equity · Community