Hamilton officials urge residents to use province's online booking system to take pressure off city's hotline

Thestar.com
May 5, 2021

Hamilton officials are urging the public to use the provincial online vaccine booking system, rather than the city hotline, to prevent the latter from being overwhelmed with calls.

Hamilton’s Emergency Operations Centre director Paul Johnson said every time the province lowers the eligibility criteria for people to get a vaccine appointment, the first day callers have jammed the call centre to the point where the system eventually hangs up on them.

“It’s frustrating,” said Johnson during the city’s virtual weekly news briefing May 3. “I know people would like to see us have a system that would take every call, but the reality is with the time we had to get ready, there was no way to create a system that was perfect around this.”

Johnson said no call system in the province could have handled the “tens of thousands” of calls the Hamilton system has been experiencing.

On social media, frustrated Hamiltonians posted complaints about how hard it has been to book an appointment using the call centre, with some saying they have been on hold for over four hours.

On May 3, for instance, all adults 18 and over in city hot spots were eligible to book an appointment. While people living in areas with postal codes that start with L9C and L8W can use the provincial booking portal, those who live in L8L, L8N or L9K can only call 905-974-9848, option 7.

On May 6, additional people will be eligible to book their shots: those turning 50 and over this year, with high-risk health conditions and who cannot work from home, including elementary and high school employees.

The city has hired extra staff and attempted to make improvements to a system that has been criticized since it was first established.

“But there is technology issues which means at crash times, when new groups are allowed to book for the first time, there is simply not a way to keep up,” said Johnson.

Johnson acknowledged the system uses a queuing process and eventually when it gets overwhelmed, it hangs up on people who have waited for hours.

“We’ve tried our hardest to create a system that works,” said Johnson. “Obviously, it works very well once you get through.”

Health officials have for the last few weeks pleaded with the public not to take their anger out on employees. Johnson has acknowledged that several staff have been victims of abusive language. Staff members are directed to hang up on people when it occurs.

“Be patient,” said Johnson. “But don’t take it out on the people who are answering the calls. They are doing their very best.”

But Johnson also urged people not to call the hotline to “complain why you are not eligible,” or to change a booking date or any other administrative request.

He said information about eligibility requirements is available on the city’s and province’s website.

Since the vaccine rollout last September public health officials had been urging people to book appointments using the city’s hotline, as well as accessing the province’s online portal, to combat the virus.

In March, health officials acknowledged the city’s hotline and province’s online booking system have been “less than smooth.”

But now health officials are encouraging people to use the province’s online booking system to relieve some of the pressure from the city’s phone line.

Medical Officer of Health Dr. Elizabeth Richardson said the city has vaccinated over 196,800 people and Hamilton has enough capacity to vaccinate even more people when the province starts to deliver the vaccine to people.