Field journal
What a missed vaccination reminder actually costs a Kuching clinic
A Tuesday booster list at a clinic off Jalan Tun Ahmad Zaidi looks tidy on the app: twelve cats, four dogs, all marked “reminded.” By 11 a.m. three of the cat slots are still empty. The vials for those animals are already out of the fridge because the nurse trusted the screen.
The cost is not a percentage. It is the opened vial that cannot go back, the nurse who could have been on a skin scrape, and the owner who later says they never saw a message. When we line the app’s “sent” column against the phone the receptionist uses for WhatsApp, the reminder often left a vendor queue and never arrived as a thread the household actually reads.
We ask clinics to keep the paper vaccine register for the same week. The register still shows who was due. The app shows who was pinged. The gap between those two columns is the reading. It is rarely the same as the vendor’s monthly chart for “engagement,” a word we do not use in the waiting room.
If your empty booster hours cluster after public holidays or after a change of SIM at the desk, bring both facts to a full app reading. The vial on the counter is evidence enough to start.