OAHHS Hospital Voice Spring/Summer 2021

24 » A magazine for and about Oregon Community Hospitals. places figured out how to give this vaccine. It was a little slower than all of maybe had wanted, but as we got into February, we were able to turn on a little more consistent spigot, now it was a spigot that was slow, it was not big enough to meet the demand in the Oregon Convention Center or at the Salem Fairgrounds, but we wanted to assure that someone in Morrow County had basically a per capita equal chance of getting a vaccina- tion appointment than someone in Portland. That meant basically everybody was mad, but at least I could go back on a consistent for- mula that said, hey, I get that that may mean only 100 doses go to Morrow County, but that is what your per capita demands with how much vaccine that we were getting. If I had double the vac- cine, I would be able to send dou- ble the doses. It took a little bit for that to get through, but that allowed for a bit more data driven policy of where vaccine doses were sent every week. And as we got into the next three months, we were able to use more inventory data and other things to manage allocations. Now we are into a model where a vaccine provider is able to get the vaccine that they need when they need it. So now we are past the point of a weekly allocation process, and more of if you’re a vaccine pro- vider and you have some vaccine in your fridge, when it looks like you’re running out, you order more, and it should be there in two or three days. It’s a very dif- ferent place than where we were but it gets back to some more nor- malcy in how medical supplies typically are ordered period. Has there been a difference in dealing with the current administration versus the previous one? I do think that there’s a little bit better collaboration with the states, listening to some concerns about the rollout, I think you that having more doses available as we got through the end of January, February and into March led to a little bit of rising tide lifts all boats. There were definitely still some concerns that based on data Ore- gon’s share of doses per capita in February, March and April still weren’t adequate. We ended up being for a while the 49th state in per capita doses that we were get- ting at one point, so we brought up those concerns and got an explanation, nothing changed, we didn’t get magically more doses, but really at that time we were starting to switch into everybody was eligible and that allowed us to change how things were done. But having more vaccine, having a Federal Emergency Management Agency site in Jackson County for a while I think was helpful and FEMA has been supportive of sites throughout the state. Here we are with well over half the state vaccinated, how does that feel? It does feel good to get to where we are, knocking on the door of 70 percent of 18 and older at least receiving dose, I would love to see demand not slow down as rapidly as it did. That’s really where we’re at, is going from people seeking vaccine to now we are seeking people out to get vaccinated. And that’s just such a change. Generally, with partnerships with the health care industry, with local public health agencies, Ore- gon, as bad as the pandemic has