Washington hospital faces backlash after opening vaccine appointments to wealthy donors

Overlake Medical Center sent an email to recipients like wealthy donors about new appointment slots

A Washington state hospital has apologised after it gave special access to vaccine appointments for wealthy donors, despite telling the public that time slots were booked through March.

“We're pleased to share that we have 500 new open appointments in the Overlake Covid-19 vaccine clinic," said an email from an Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, Washington, which included a special access code to the appointments.

The email, obtained by the Seattle Times, was sent to more than 100 donors for the hospital and appeared to be favouring them over the rest of the public. These “major donors” gave at least $10,000 to the hospital system, the newspaper reported.  

Washington Governor Jay Inslee said during a Tuesday press conference that it “is not acceptable” for a hospital to prioritise donors over vaccinating the public.

“If in fact they were giving preference to some VIP list, that’s not the way to do it,” Mr Inslee said at the news conference. “That is not acceptable for us. We need to give everybody a fair shot.”

Hospital officials released a statement following the backlash.

“We recognize we made a mistake by including a subset of our donors and by not adopting a broader outreach strategy to fill these appointments, and we apologize,” the statement read. “Our intent and commitment has always been to administer every vaccine made available to us safely, appropriately, and efficiently.”

Overlake sent the email to about 4,000 members of its community "including volunteers, retired nurses and physicians, all employees and about 100 donors from our Foundation database," the statement read.

But it came as appointments were booked for people without the special access code through March.

Tom DeBord, the hospital’s chief operating officer, told the Seattle Times the email invite was sent in response to the hospital’s vaccination scheduling system crashing.

“We’re under pressure to vaccinate people who are eligible and increase capacity,” Mr DeBord said. “In hindsight, we could certainly look back and say this wasn’t the best way to do it.”

Washington state’s vaccine eligibility allows for anyone 65 years and older, or people 50 years and older who live in a multigenerational household, to make an appointment to be vaccinated. Healthcare workers, first responders, and those living in long-term care facilities are also eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.

Overlake has administered about 11,000 vaccines to date, its statement read, and vowed to “soon administer vaccines for over 40,000 community members who have upcoming appointments scheduled through our online system."

More than 570,000 state residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine since distribution first started in December.