Received the following email message from Alka Atal-Barrio, MD Chief Medical Officer at Everett Clinic today regarding selecting patients for COVID-19 Vaccinations. Thought you may find it of interest.
Last month, Washington State announced it would be moving into COVID-19 vaccine phase 1B-1.
In support of that effort, The Everett Clinic opened our phone lines and MyChart for vaccine appointments. At that time, we had very limited doses of vaccine available.
Demand for COVID-19 vaccines has caused appointment spots to fill up quickly. For these reasons, many patients had long phone holds or delays within MyChart and weren’t able to schedule appointments.
We’re sorry for the frustration that many of you had. Our service to you wasn’t the standard we aim to provide and that you’ve come to expect from The Everett Clinic.
Washington State has developed a solution for most of our patients that includes mass vaccination clinics which are receiving large quantities of vaccine.
The State will be prioritizing vaccine delivery (figuring out where to send the vaccine first) to mass vaccination clinics which means we will receive little, if any, COVID-19 vaccine each week.
We’re all part of a quickly changing process to vaccinate people as quickly as possible as a country, state and community.
Each week, Washington state tells us how many doses we’ll receive. We open up appointment spots based on how many shots we have available. Some weeks we receive zero vaccine.
For weeks we do receive vaccine, we’ve created a system to randomly select eligible patients who will be invited to schedule a COVID-19 vaccine appointment. Randomly selected patients will be contacted directly and will have 72 hours to accept the invitation before it expires.
Our continuing limited vaccine supply will not be able to meet the demand of our patient’s requests for a vaccine.
Please visit the Washington State Department of Health web site to find other vaccination locations.
No matter where you receive your COVID-19 vaccine, your health remains our top priority. We pledge to give you safe care within our clinics.
February 17, 2021
Everett