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- Doctors protested at Stanford Medical Center on Friday, saying the hospital had not prioritized vaccines for frontline workers and instead gave too much to office staff and others working from home.
- Internal emails from hospital management acknowledged that the vaccine rollout plan did not include enough residents and fellows.
- The protest comes as at least one other hospital has come under fire for allowing staff who are not on the front line to receive the vaccine.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Stanford doctors protested the system’s vaccine rollout plan on Friday as several hospitals are criticized for administering too many doses to staff who are not on the front lines, according to reports from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Doctors staged a protest at Stanford Medical Center on Friday morning, claiming the hospital had neglected frontline workers in favor of senior officials and employees who work from home.
According to a letter viewed by the San Francisco Chronicle, protesters sent a letter to senior Stanford officials saying only seven residents and fellows had been included in the first round of vaccinations, which began on Friday. The hospital used an algorithm aimed at older healthcare workers and employees.
Stanford representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The demonstrations take place during the first week of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, which began after the Food and Drug Administration cleared the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use last week. Vaccines will first be available to healthcare workers and residents of nursing homes. The rest of the American population should expect to have access to the vaccine in the spring of 2021.
In anticipation of the deployment, health care systems across the country spent weeks figuring out which staff should get vaccinated first. Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, Northwell Health in New York and Yale New Haven Health in Connecticut told Business Insider this month that healthcare workers in direct contact with coronavirus patients would be the first to receive the vaccine.
Read more: ‘It’s time for the game’: Hospitals nationwide prepare to give first COVID-19 injections to millions of healthcare workers
Although many hospitals say they reserve the first doses of the vaccine for frontline workers, some hospital workers fear their facilities are not prioritizing properly, or not at all. Mount Sinai was criticized this week for allowing a marketing staff member based at an emergency care center to receive a vaccine on Tuesday, Politico reported.
In the Stanford case, the hospital’s chief medical officer, Dr Niraj Sehgal, apologized to staff this week for “unintentional missteps” in the vaccine rollout, according to one. screenshot of email shared on Twitter. Another email, sent to staff this morning, confirmed that the vaccine rollout did not include trainees.
“There were several conversations leading up to this point at which point we were assured that the trainees should be placed in each wave to distribute the doses so as not to impact the staff but to prioritize the group as a whole. “the email says. “We realize that this first allocation failed to provide the correct order of protection.”
Some hospitals that take a more haphazard approach to deploying vaccines to staff may do so to protect themselves from legal liability. For example, if hospitals prioritize older staff to receive the vaccine, they might open up to age discrimination. Labor and employment workers say employers probably cannot demand that older workers be vaccinated first, even if it is for their protection.
Read more: Yes, your boss might ask you to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Labor lawyers weigh down the rights of employees.
Karla Grossenbacher, who chairs the Labor and Employment Practice at Seyfarth Shaw law firm in Washington, DC, said randomizing vaccine deployments could be a good way to avoid possible legal pitfalls, but “wouldn’t be the best way to do it.” Instead, employers should focus on the different levels of risk presented by each job and prioritize that way.
Katherine Dudley Helms, managing shareholder of Ogletree Deakins law firm in Columbia, South Carolina and a member of the firm’s coronavirus task force and health practice group, pointed out that randomizing vaccine deployments could in fact exposing a hospital to more legal risk if there were any opportunities. to “slip into a buddy” and ask people to cut the line.
“Here’s the thing: it has to be really random,” she said, adding that it might be a better strategy for hospitals to prioritize workers most at risk and then randomize everyone else’s vaccination. .
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