Scripps CEO Wants Simpler Vaccine Process --And More Vaccines

Speaker 1: 00:00 As numbers surge this week, the CDC gave the go ahead to vaccinate people 65. And over the problem is the availability of the vaccine KPBS reporter Taryn Mentos spoke with Chris van Gorder, CEO of Scripps health, about how they're navigating that reality. Speaker 2: 00:18 We have been lobbying. I think a lot of people have is that we need to make this a little bit more simple. Um, as the president of the California hospital association said in a legislative briefing, we did yesterday for local legislators. She goes, there's a choice of precision or speed. Um, and it appears right now that government would like us to do more speed, get more, more vaccines and more arms. But the process we have, uh, with, by just having subset subgroups, um, like healthcare workers or firefighters or subgroups, trying to verify who they are, get them organized and, and is slowing the process down a little bit. And we think we can move much faster if we simplified it. Uh, and if we had the vaccine, so we actually made that request to the legislators yesterday morning because we'd actually asked the County and the County said, no, they were following, you know, tier one, a, uh, and then by the afternoon, uh, at the press conference, they announced that we could give vaccines to 65 and older, uh, if we had any vaccine. Speaker 2: 01:17 Well, the only vaccine we've been given is for the healthcare providers. And we have just started about a week ago, the second round of vaccines for the healthcare providers. Uh, and so the vaccine we really have now is just reserved for that second dose. So, um, we'll be able to start, uh, soon. I think that there'll be small numbers of, of seniors. Um, we're trying to calculate now how much excess we will have to be able to do that, but just the scripts alone, we have over 150,000 patients that are 65 and older, and we're talking about, you know, numbers in the single thousands, you know, maybe maybe three, four or 5,000 at this point in time. So, um, we have no idea when additional, um, vaccine, uh, will be distributed to us Speaker 3: 01:59 Why don't facilities and even the County know when more vaccine is coming. There's lots of criticism at the state level that we have far more than we're actually administering. So why don't we know when more is coming? What's the gap in that process? Speaker 2: 02:17 I don't know. I wish I could answer that for you. I do know that the federal government was reserving a certain amount and that decision by health and human services to release all of the vaccine. Uh, now I have no idea how much will come to the state of California. It goes to, it really goes from the feds to the state, to the counties. And, um, and at this point I have no idea how much is coming to this, to the state, nor how much will be going to the County. And certainly not, uh, no idea of how much will come to scripts. Speaker 3: 02:45 The County has been telling us that the problem with tracking doses is how decentralized it is and that approved vaccinators are getting it right from the feds or the state. And it's not through the County. How does it go? How does it work with, uh, scripts? Where does it go through and how does it get to you? Speaker 2: 03:05 Uh, we go through the County, the County, uh, we can place, we are a pod or a point of distribution. Uh, it's our understanding that we can make a direct, um, um, application for vaccine. Uh, we haven't done it that way. It's a complicated process and we've been waiting for the County to provide it. So for example, when the initial doses came out, uh, we gave them a list of what our tier one eight was. Um, everybody, you know, all the health care organizations in San Diego did that. And all of us were given 72% of what we had asked for. Um, and so that's the distribution at this point is through the County. Speaker 3: 03:42 You mentioned speaking with legislators, um, you spoke with them yesterday, probably right around the time that the governor made the announcement that 65, um, patient 65 years and older can actually get the vaccine. Um, what did the legislators say to you when you expressed a need for more vaccine to accomplish that? Speaker 2: 03:59 They were very supportive. They had their own ideas. Um, they, I think that we're in full agreement that we need more vaccine, uh, and we need a simpler process. And so we can speed up, you know, the whole process of vaccinating our community. So they were very supportive. Um, and they, they were receptive to our ideas. I mean, part of this, we were telling, talking about the collaboration between the hospitals in the community and frankly, the collaboration with the County and even the state. And it's been good thus far. Um, remember we're talking about, uh, the, the old analogy of trying to repair and build an airplane while we're flying it. We've never been in this situation before the country has never been in the situation that the logistics we're talking about are probably the most complicated in, in our nation's history. Um, and we have people that are desperate to get this vaccine. Speaker 2: 04:44 I, you know, I mean, the minute that announcement went out yesterday, I went, Oh my God, every doctor's office in town is going to get phone calls as what we, which is why we put out the announcement that don't call your doctor's office because they don't have any vaccine. And they don't, and they don't know when they're going to get it either. So, um, I was just communicating to two or three patients, uh, just before this call, trying to tell them that we'll keep you informed as we receive the vaccine. We will let you know. I mean, one of the things that we were trying to communicate to this, to the legislators yesterday and to the County is that the healthcare organizations in this community are very well organized. I mean, we do vaccinations all the time. We do, you know, thousands of flu vaccinations every year. Speaker 2: 05:24 I mean, we have a very robust electronic health records, uh, so we can, you know, um, itemized individuals by age and by their clinical issues that they have. And so if the government really wanted to speed up the process, just get us the vaccine, uh, give us the very loose guidelines is what we would recommend. And we will start putting a vaccine and a lot of patients and we can get, we can categorize it by the, the sickest. Uh, we can do it by age. Um, the challenging part is when we say you want to, you're just going to give it to grocery store workers or some other essential workup. We have no idea how to even identify those, those individuals. And so that would, that's what slows, I think the process down. So make it simple, get us the vaccine. And we're going to, we're going to stick it in a lot of arms and, and get the immunity up in this community. Speaker 1: 06:12 Just this morning. The Washington post reported that when federal health officials gave the okay to vaccinate people, 65 and up their reserves were already depleted. We'll have more of Taryn Mentos conversation with Chris van Gorder on Monday show.