As Covid-19 vaccines continue to spread across the country, many hospitals and clinics prefer their own patients, and people who have a primary care physician or a doctor attached to the right hospital are struggling to find doses.
Many states preferred to distribute the vaccine first to hospitals, which then became the primary delivery of the shot to their own health workers and others who qualified. In many cases, people need to have a primary care physician attached to the hospital, or hospital care, to get a shot there.
This means that people living in poorer communities without large hospitals will find it even more difficult to access the still scarce vaccination. The problem highlights one of the challenges facing officials in trying to vaccinate people fairly.
When Texans 65 and older and with certain medical conditions were eligible for Covid-19 vaccines, Jovana Sanchez-Melendez, a 35-year-old university director of technology near Dallas with an autoimmune disease, developed an e- received mail from her doctor to sign for an appointment.
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Ms Sanchez-Melendez received the vaccination quickly. But she said she could not get appointments for her parents, who work up front as a guardian and a construction worker and have medical conditions that put them at great risk for Covid-19. Her parents were not patients in a hospital with doses.
“You have to know someone who knows someone who knows how to get it, and even then it’s not sure,” she said. Sanchez-Melendez said. Her parents finally found doses while her father got his first shot on Wednesday, about a month after she got her hair.
Similar dynamics have been reported across the country, in equally diverse states such as California, New York, Iowa and Alabama. Health officials said the situation has improved slightly over the past few weeks as more hospitals begin to make room for non-patient registrations. In some states, large pharmacies such as CVS now distribute doses, which increases access.
Dennis Andrulis, a senior researcher at the Texas Health Institute, said 27% of white men, 31% of black men and 41% of Hispanic men nationwide do not have a primary care physician. He said hospitals also tend to locate in more affluent areas, leaving poorer neighborhoods with fewer options.
“You have a history of neglecting steroids,” said Dr. Andrulis said. “If people have access to a doctor in their community and insurance, the door will be open for them.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Society for Public Health, said some people who needed the vaccine the most – workers in dangerous, public works – were the least equipped to fight for doses if they did not have a connection to the doctor. . Bus drivers, supervisors, grocery workers and others cannot refresh their days on the computer screens looking for doses of vaccinations, as people can do on computers from home, he says.
Many doctors and clinics without ties to a large hospital have been left out of the initial distribution of vaccines, said Dr. On Wednesday, he said the situation was developing. “There is definitely an increase in availability, but many of the community medicine providers still do not have easy access,” he said. “The retail pharmacies should help the situation.”
In Texas, there are facilities that prefer their own patients, and some have been designated by the state as vaccination points. Hospitals said they expanded access because they could get it right. A spokeswoman for the UT Southwestern Medical Center, where Mrs. Sanchez-Melendez received her vaccine, saying it treats very sick patients and tries to give preference to those likely to be hospitalized if they get the virus. The hospital allowed periodic access to notifications for non-patients, and set up a vaccination room in an area of southern Dallas that was historically under health care.
John DeFilippo received his second Covid-19 vaccine shot in January.
John DeFilippo, a 72-year-old in Houston, signed up for vaccination appointments in January at the same time as his wife, Marylyn. Her doctor at Memorial Hermann Health System sends her an appointment link by email. A few days later, he gets a call from a representative in the hospital to ask who his doctor is. Mr DeFilippo had previously been treated at Memorial Hermann and had recovered from a back operation there, but his primary care physician was not directly connected. He said the hospital had canceled his appointment.
A health system spokesman said it had such a limited amount of vaccines and such a large qualifying population that it had to move in waves. “Like many health systems across the country, we have started vaccinating established, active patients,” the hospital said. “By mid-January, however, we had offered a number of mass clinics for vaccination by greater Houston.”
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Mr DeFilippo said he was surprised not only by the hospital’s policy but also that it would devote resources to the detection and weeding of non-patients during the pandemic.
“I’m not a stranger in the hospital, but I think I’m not enough of a customer,” he said. “She should have examined me and my doctor – all for one patient.”
He said he could get the vaccine later in another hospital.
Write to Elizabeth Findell by [email protected]
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