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Hospitals pause vaccine appointments, wait for supply

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Seniors hoping to get the COVID-19 vaccine soon are finding few appointments available. With 1.7 million people eligible for this phase, and the state receiving just over 100,000 doses per week, it will take weeks to get to everyone.

However, some patients are saying they wish they could register for an appointment, even if it is weeks away.

On Monday, providers explained that they need a guaranteed vaccine supply before they can open up more appointments.

“We have put a pause on scheduling, which we know is extremely frustrating to all the individuals looking for an appointment,” said Cynthia Dold, associate vice president for clinical operations at UW Medicine.

UW Medicine scheduled 30,000 appointments in three days when phase 1b opened a couple of weeks ago.

Dold says they’re making their way through those patients but are unable to schedule more appointments until they get more vaccine doses. So far, UW Medicine has not canceled any appointments.

“People have emotional attachments to these appointments, for very obvious reasons, so the idea of putting our organization in a position where we are canceling what I believe is an agreement between a provider and a patients is something to be avoided at all costs,” Dold said.

While there is much uncertainty surrounding landing an appointment, according to the Washington State Hospital Association, very few hospitals have actually canceled appointments. They recently collected vaccine appointment data from hospitals around the state and posted it, which can be seen at http://www.wsha.org/wp-content/uploads/COVID-Vaccine-Summary_As-of-20210123.pdf/.

While Swedish is listed as canceling 10,000 appointments last week, the hospital explained that those appointments had not been booked by individuals. They were spots the hospital had hoped to use to vaccinate patients before the vaccine doses were sent somewhere else.

“We would really discourage people from making more than one appointment, especially if they don’t cancel them. It pulls a spot from someone else and could lead to vaccine waste,” said Cassie Sauer, president of the Washington State Hospital Association.

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