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COVID-19
VACCINATION

The COVID-19 Vaccination Game

By Melody Newsom, BCMS Chief Operating Officer, Community Liaison

Vaccinations (and a plethora of questions about them) are all the tors only; 200 doses at that location for doctors and medical staff; 35
rage these days! How on earth do I get one? Which brand should I doses RIGHT NOW at this location”, and so on! (I have likened the
get? Should I even get vaccinated when it’s available? How do I get situation to a game of “Whack-A-Mole” on steroids!)
vaccine for my practice to give to my patients? The list goes on! As you recall from previous articles in San Antonio Medicine,
The hardest one for the physicians, their staff and other medical pro- BCMS in conjunction with H-E-B held a 1st dose vaccine event at
fessionals in the Phase 1A category is the “How on earth do I get one?” the BCMS building on Sunday, January 10 and the follow-up 2nd
Physicians that do not have privileges at a hospital along with their dose event Saturday, February 6.
staff were left out of the mix during the initial rollout of the vaccine I knew that was still just a drop in the bucket of the medical com-
in Texas. This became even more of an extreme challenge when the munity needing to be vaccinated, so the vaccine Whack-A-Mole game
State of Texas opened up the vaccination priorities to the 1B popula- continued. Vaccine opportunities became few and far between. UT
tion, leaving the doctors and other medical profes- Health reached out and had a limited number of
sionals in the same boat as the rest of the vaccine doses to dedicate to the 1A group. I
community, having to struggle to find an op- collected names and phone numbers and
portunity to get vaccinated! H-E-B had been UT Health personnel called to schedule ap-
designated as the place for Phase 1A’s to get pointments. Still a very cumbersome scenario
vaccinated, yet they only received 100 doses at for all involved, but it was still progress. Fi-
each pharmacy in San Antonio for a total of nally, on Thursday, February 25 at 4 p.m., UT
1,400 doses for our entire medical community. Health called to let me know they were going
I have dedicated nearly all of my time at to designate 1,000 doses for the doctors and
BCMS, since the pandemic was declared, fo- other medical professionals on Saturday,
cused on all things COVID-19. I’ve served February 27. Wow! Short notice again but,
on various pandemic related committees hey, “We’ll see what we can do”. UT Health
such as the BCMS COVID Task Force, had been internally testing a program that
Metro Health Testing Task Force, Testing would allow the ability to upload the con-
and Lab Reporting Workgroup, the Com- tact information for those needing to be
munity Response Coalition, the Regional vaccinated so they could self-schedule.
Medical Operations Center (RMOC) and BCMS became the beta test to the large
monitored multiple conference calls each population of physicians. Despite a few
week such as UT Health, Southwest Texas glitches, we were able to get over 700 up-
Regional Advisory Council (STRAC) and loaded into the system by Saturday. The
the Department of State Health Services glitches seem to be minimal now and, the
(DSHS). great news is, UT Health has been desig-
At each of these committees on which I nated a vaccine hub and continues to make
participate I continually mention the plight vaccination appointments available to our
of our physician members who, along with physician members and other medical pro-
their staffs, are without hospital privileges fessionals. I want to say I finally won at the
and therefore have no path to get the vac- Whack-a-Mole game. (At least for now!)
cine. So, when a hospital has a small quantity “Which brand should I get?” With three
of vaccine available, they would call me – vaccines receiving the Emergency Use Au-
“there are 300 doses at this location for doc- thorization (EUA) – the Pfizer and Mod-

26 SAN ANTONIO MEDICINE • April 2021