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One of Pennsylvania’s largest healthcare networks has allowed family members of employees to skip the COVID-19 vaccine line, raising questions of fairness in an era of high public demand and scarcity of supply .
Geisinger’s decision to grant special access to relatives of employees was rebuked this week by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which said the health giant should not have held vaccination clinics for members eligible family of employees.
“The DOH has been in contact with the supplier to ensure that in the future they follow the agreement they signed, or risk losing access to the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine,” a said Maggi Barton, a spokesperson for the Department of Health.
The state agency said it was unaware that Geisinger had organized the inoculation of family members until alerted by The Associated Press.
Geisinger said that since family members who received the vaccines met the state’s eligibility criteria, he did not need to tell the Department of Health that he had reserved a vaccine for them. Geisinger also insisted that he was following state guidelines for vaccine eligibility and administration and said: “At no point were we made aware that our immunization schedule might be at risk. risk.”
Geisinger, which has 24,000 employees in central and northeastern Pennsylvania, held employee vaccination clinics on three consecutive Sundays in late January and early February. Each employee was allowed to bring two family members, as long as they were eligible for the phased rollout of the vaccine by the state, Geisinger admitted in response to a PA investigation. Family members did not have to live with the employee to qualify, the health system said.
Around 3,600 relatives of Geisinger employees have been vaccinated as part of the program. No additional vaccination clinic for family members of employees is planned.
“The situation in mid-January was very different from where we are today,” Geisinger spokesperson Matthew Van Stone said. At the time, he said, Geisinger had an adequate supply of vaccines and “we believed that Sunday opening to employees and up to two family members eligible for Phase 1A would allow the community to more easily find appointments throughout the week.
It is not known whether members of the public have lost appointments due to doses administered to parents of employees.
But vaccination clinics have allowed family members to avoid the frustrating, tedious and often fruitless hunt for a date that plagued the state’s early deployment and led to numerous complaints among Pennsylvania residents. The state was among the lowest ranked in the country for the effectiveness of immunizing its population.
“Even if their intentions were good, we shouldn’t use vaccines as a benefit to friends and family,” said Gabriel Lázaro-Muñoz, professor at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. “It was just about putting the wrong people first at the wrong time.”
The health system, which operates nine hospitals and a 550,000-member health plan, has given family members a head start at the same time as newly expanded eligibility rules have caused increased demand for statewide.
Geisinger’s first weekend clinic took place on January 24. This was five days after the state made people aged 65 and older and young people with high-risk medical conditions eligible for the vaccine. Geisinger said at the time that it was facing an overwhelming demand for vaccine appointments, marked by extremely high call volume and online traffic.
Linda Thorne, 65, who works at her family’s pizzeria, said she had been trying for weeks to get a date with Geisinger, but the health system is not scheduling an appointment for the first dose for the time being.
“It’s really frustrating,” she says. “I see all these people my age getting really sick, and it’s scary. I don’t want to end up in the hospital on a vent.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” said Thorne, as Geisinger hosted family members given the scarcity of vaccine supply.
Other major health networks, including UPMC and Penn State Health, said they were not making separate arrangements for relatives of employees to be vaccinated.
“Absolutely not,” said Brian Downs, spokesperson for the Lehigh Valley Health Network. “We are following the Phase 1A (state) guidelines and have been doing it from the start.”
The Department of Health said that while Geisinger has not violated the letter of its supplier agreement with the state, “we hope that suppliers would not prioritize families of employees over community members who are also eligible, ”said department spokesman Barry Ciccocioppo.
Federal guidelines state that people in the same eligibility category should have an equal opportunity to be vaccinated. The guidelines also state that no person should be disadvantaged “by reason of their social position or other socially determined circumstances”.
Nancy Kass, deputy director of public health at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, said if Geisinger used the Family Membership Program as a way to deliver more vaccines to underserved populations, she would consider it “An extremely intelligent strategy”. to increase equity.
“If it’s just a benefit, it’s not appropriate,” she said.
Kass said that while the Geisinger program is problematic, the nationwide rollout of the vaccine as a whole has been unfair because it rewards some people over others – especially, those with the time and computer skills to find a solution. open appointment.
Geisinger said employee and family attendance at Sunday clinics was low, and he started using Sundays to vaccinate patients who had to reschedule their appointments due to bad weather or delays. ‘shipping.
Geisinger’s vaccination of family members has been a relatively small part of its overall program. As of Monday, the health system has administered more than 112,000 doses of the vaccine.
Geisinger’s public vaccination sites are located in Jenkins Township, Jersey Shore, Danville and Lewistown.
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