Expert Perspective: Vaccine cold chain management

Anne Finch (00:00):
The cold chain management for vaccines is making sure that when you take ownership of a vaccine, all the way through the time it's used on a human being, it has been maintained at a certain temperature. Now that seems really easy, but think about all the things that are out of your control. It's put in a UPS truck, it's put in a FedEx truck, it's in a guy's arms walking through 120 degree Arizona heatwave, and it needs to stay there. So we have these special packages that have ice packs in them and it's got actually a temperature gauge in it. Through the whole time it's being shipped, it's recording the temperature so when you open that box up, you can actually see ever was it too hot or was it too cold. And if right away, you know you can't use that. In the past, you're kind of just guessing.

Anne Finch (01:02):
And so for us it's done a couple things, especially for our federal agencies. In the past that was a lot of waste because you didn't know if it stayed in the right threshold, you would just throw it out. Now we're not only able to ensure that those vaccinations that we're giving people were controlled, but a lot of times we can repackage it, send it back to the warehouse, again, for sure making it in the controlled range, and be able to reuse it again. That saves our taxpayers, that saves the federal government a ton of money, and in some situations, think about the flu vaccine shortages, it just makes sure that we're not wasting really valuable assets. It's a critical capability that we have within OPTUM Serve.