NSW Premier’s Awards winner: “A mammoth effort”
Date published: 08 Nov 2021
Author: Katie Harkin
When the NSW Health Vaccination Centre - Sydney Olympic Park opened on 10 May 2021, staff were administering around 5,000 vaccines per day.
Fast forward to August 2021, and that number doubled, with up to 10,000 vaccinations per day administered at the centre. This was only made possible through the efforts of all staff involved, including several of our HealthShare NSW teams.
HealthShare NSW was first engaged in March by the Sydney Local Heath District to set up the NSW Health Vaccination Centre - Sydney Olympic Park and provide logistics support for all consumables other than vaccines. HealthShare NSW set up an agreement with medical consumable warehouse contractor OneLink to work together on the set up and support of this initiative. From there, HealthShare NSW’s role grew to cover the supply of consumables for the Mobile Clinic run by Sydney Local Heath District, as well as setting up and supporting a new smaller vaccination centre at Bicentennial Park.
“It was a mammoth effort and the HealthShare NSW team went above and beyond to help with everything that was needed. No job was too small or out of scope,” said Maria Kokkinakos, Director of Strategic Health Sourcing at Sydney Local Heath District.
Amanda Dowse, Leader of Supply Logistics at Sydney Olympic Park, agreed; “It’s been an amazing journey, which has had its challenges. But the output has delivered personal growth, knowledge and confidence within our team members.”
The work at the site is incredibly labour intensive, with staff manually unloading and moving up to 10 pallets of goods at a time into the centre. On top of that, the workload changes all the time, sometimes weekly, as vaccination supply changes. This means there is little room for forward planning and requires the team to be flexible to ensure a quality service is provided.
“The NSW Health Vaccination Centre at Sydney Olympic Park is an incredible achievement and an important milestone in our continued effort to protect our community from COVID-19,” said Dr Teresa Anderson AM, Sydney Local Health District Chief Executive, praising the collaborative effort of all NSW Health staff involved in the process.
“I’m proud of the extraordinary efforts that our teams have gone to, to make sure that people feel welcome and safe when they come to be vaccinated.”
Another team that has made a huge contribution is HealthShare NSW Supply Chain Operations, who ensured sites had the right level of medical consumables required to meet vaccination rates throughout this time. This has been an integral part of the process that keeps the NSW Health Vaccination Centre - Sydney Olympic Park operational.
“I believe that our ability to adapt and meet changing demands at such short notice is the value that HealthShare NSW brings to these types of operations,” said Kim Senior, Associate Director Business Performance.
“It’s been an incredible effort.”
NSW Premier’s Awards: Putting the Customer at the Centre
As published on the NSW Premiere’s Awards website:
As part of the roll-out of NSW’s Vaccination Program, NSW Health under the leadership of State Health Emergency Operations Centre (SHEOC) set about establishing a mass vaccination centre to significantly increase the capacity of NSW to vaccinate its citizens. SLHD and SHEOC operationalised the first mass vaccination centre for NSW and vaccinated more than 300,000 people in its first two months. From its inception, they have put the customer at the centre to ensure that the experience of every person vaccinated is a positive one to increase the confidence of the community in being vaccinated.
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