As Covid-19 vaccines continue to be rolled out across the country, many hospitals and clinics prioritize their own patients, leaving people who do not have a primary care physician or a doctor affiliated with the appropriate hospital. struggling to find doses.
Many states chose to distribute the vaccine first to hospitals, which later became the main distributor of the vaccine to their own health care workers and to others who qualified. In many cases, people must have a primary care physician affiliated with the hospital or receive care from the hospital to receive a shot.
This means that people living in poorer communities without large hospitals often have even more difficulty finding access to the still scarce vaccine. The problem highlights one of the challenges facing officials in the effort to vaccinate people fairly.
When jeans 65 and older and with certain medical conditions became eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine, Jovana Sánchez-Melendez, a 35-year-old university director of technology near Dallas who has a autoimmune disease, he received an email from his doctor to sign up for an appointment.
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Mrs. Sánchez-Melendez received the vaccine quickly. But she said she could not get appointments for her parents, who work in front-line positions as a custodian and construction worker and who have medical conditions that make them high for Covid-19. Her parents were not patients of a dose hospital.
“You have to know someone who knows someone who knows how to get it, and even then it’s not a safe thing,” Ms. Sánchez-Melendez. Finally, her parents found doses and her father received the first shot on Wednesday, about a month after she received his.
Similar dynamics have been reported across the country, in states as disparate as California, New York, Iowa, and Alabama. The situation has improved slightly in recent weeks as more hospitals begin to make room for non-patient records, health officials said. In addition, in some states, major retail pharmacies, such as CVS, distribute doses and expand access.
Dennis Andrulis, a senior researcher at the Texas Institute of Health, said nationwide 27% of white men, 31% of black men and 41% of Hispanic men do not have a primary care physician. He said hospitals also tend to be located in more prosperous areas, leaving poorer neighborhoods with fewer options.
“You have a history of abandoning steroids,” Dr. Andrulis said. “If people have access to a doctor in their community and insurance, the door will be more open for them.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said some of the people most in need of the vaccine (workers in dangerous and public workplaces) are less equipped to fight doses if they have no connection to a doctor. Bus drivers, caretakers, grocery store workers and others can’t spend their days refreshing computer screens looking for vaccine doses, as can people who work from home on computers , he said.
Many doctors and clinics unrelated to a major hospital were left out of initial vaccine distribution efforts, Dr. Benjamin said. On Wednesday, he said the situation is evolving. “There is certainly an increase in availability, but many of the community’s medical providers still don’t have easy access,” he said. “Retail pharmacies should help with the situation.”
In Texas, facilities that prioritize their own patients include some designated by the state as vaccination centers. Hospitals said they have expanded access as they have been able to do so. A spokesman for UT Southwestern Medical Center, where Ms. Sanchez-Melendez received his vaccine, said he treats extremely sick patients and tried to prioritize those most likely to be hospitalized if they caught the virus. The hospital has allowed regular access to enrollment for non-patient patients and has established a vaccination site in an area of southern Dallas that is historically unattended by health care.
John DeFilippo received his second vaccine against Covid-19 in January.
John DeFilippo, 72, of Houston, signed up for vaccine appointments in January at the same time as his wife, Marylyn. Your Hermann Health System Memorial doctor emailed you an appointment link. A few days later, he received a call from a hospital representative to ask who his doctor was. DeFilippo had already been treated at the Hermann Memorial and had recovered from back surgery there, but his primary care physician was not directly affiliated. He said the hospital canceled his appointment.
A health system spokeswoman said she had such a limited supply of vaccines and such a large skilled population that she had to go through waves. “Like many health systems across the country, we started offering vaccination to active and established patients,” the hospital said. “However, in mid-January, we were organizing several mass vaccination clinics around the city of Houston.”
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DeFilippo said he was surprised, not only by hospital policy, but would also devote resources during the pandemic to tracking and eliminating non-patients.
“I’m not a stranger to the hospital, but I guess I’m not a client enough,” he said. “My doctor and I must have researched, all for one patient.”
He said he was later able to get the vaccine from a different hospital.
Write to Elizabeth Findell to [email protected]
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