‘Planning is the antidote to panic’: Providence Hospital System Defies America’s Slow Vaccine Rollout Trend

According to this article from CNBC, the U.S. COVID vaccination effort is far behind original estimates. The CDC claims 15.4 million doses have been delivered to states, but only 4.5 million Americans have received their first shot. Providence Hospital System, however, has defied the country’s slow rollout trend and has given the first dose of the vaccine to more than half of its 120,000 employees in 51 hospitals across seven states. 

Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, chief clinical officer for Providence said they began strategizing in September to identify caregivers with the highest risk and how to integrate technology like emails and texts to streamline the rollout process.  “Planning is the antidote to panic,” she said.

Compton-Phillips went on to explain one of their solutions which was to build a “validate and verify” tool to manage vaccine rollout across the provider’s hospitals. The tool contained the “roles” which hosted specific jobs, and it also contained work locations of those within the Providence system. People would then, in turn, reach out and validate the data. This way, key groups of people were not left out, which has unintentionally happened with so many other organizations.

“We know that there is vaccine hesitancy, in particular in certain underserved communities, communities of color that have less trust in the health care system, so we’re partnering very deeply with them to understand those concerns and make sure that we’re addressing them so that we can really convince people to do what is in their best interests, which is protect themselves from this virus,” Compton-Phillips said.