Northridge Hospital Medical Center violated county rules by providing COVID-19 immunizations to teachers and other staff at the private Wesley School in North Hollywood and elsewhere, county officials said this week.
The hospital acknowledged the error and said it would not be repeated, but the episode again raised concerns about the equitable distribution of the potentially life-saving vaccine, which remains in short supply.
Premature vaccinations surfaced largely as a result of the frankness of the school administration, which sought to reassure parents that employees faced little risk of exposure to coronavirus as the school gradually reopened for face-to-face student service.
“We wanted to share this through a special program … all Wesley employees who wanted to be vaccinated were able to take advantage of an offer last week and received their first dose,” wrote the administration in a message on Tuesday to its community.
The problem was that teachers and other school staff were not yet authorized by the LA County Department of Health to receive the doses. When pressed to name the origin of the vaccines, the school said it was Northridge Hospital Medical Center.
County officials quickly concluded that the hospital acted inappropriately.
Wesley School jumped ahead of the line when it received COVID-19 shots for its team.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
“The county’s Department of Public Health reported this incident to the state and informed the provider that this action violates the tier system now in effect in LA County, under which only health care providers and people over 65 are being vaccinated. ”, According to a department statement provided by public relations manager Sienna Spencer-Markles. “We have been assured that there will be no repeat of this violation.”
In addition to an official reprimand, there appears to be no penalty for the violation. Wesley School is located in North Hollywood and charges tuition ranging from $ 28,460 to $ 32,020 per year, depending on the grade, with a new student fee of $ 2,000. The school’s parents include Northridge Medical Center Chief Financial Officer Doug Brown.
The hospital’s initial statement about the incident does not match the school’s explanation, with the hospital claiming that vaccinations for educators were “targeted at people aged 65 and over”, adding: “this was a good faith effort to target all our doses available to essential workers and the elderly in our community as quickly as possible. ”
On Friday, hospital officials decided to provide additional explanations and take responsibility for the breach. In response to questions, the hospital said its administrators had initially assumed that teachers and other key professionals, including police, would be eligible to receive the vaccine on February 1.
This eligibility expansion could take place in the next two to three weeks, county officials said. However, at that time, teachers are unlikely to have received the two required vaccines and achieved maximum immunity before campuses are eligible to reopen fully.
“The hospital reached out to several public and private schools in the area, including day care centers and law enforcement agencies, inviting staff and teachers to get the vaccine at the hospital on February 2,” the hospital said. “In all, 14 schools and daycare centers responded and 164 teachers and staff received the vaccine.”
The authorities also noted that public schools in the region were among the first to be offered places. The LA Unified School District has been pushing hard for vaccines to be made available as part of a strategy to reopen campuses that have been closed for almost a year. But Northridge’s offer made district officials uncomfortable, according to a statement from LA Unified.
First, the offer was only 100 doses, which would hardly affect a school system that needs about 25,000 doses to cover all the staff needed just to reopen elementary school campuses. In addition, “we asked for guidance from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which confirmed that the rules allow vaccination to be offered only to individuals aged 65 and over and certain other categories of people.”
The district “will only be involved in vaccination efforts carried out in accordance with [county] health rules, ”said the statement.
The hospital then turned to other buyers outside the public school system.
“We realized that it was premature to make these appointments,” acknowledged the hospital. “When we were told that the county would not vaccinate this group, we should have canceled those appointments.”
The hospital refused to name which schools received vaccines, “out of respect for their privacy, and because this was an effort driven by our hospital, not by those organizations, and we take responsibility for that.”
Wesley’s interim school principal, Julie Galles, said the school did not seek vaccines, but she declined to say how evangelism occurred.
According to the hospital, “the hospital team worked to develop a list of 14 additional schools that we contacted Valley, and several hospital staff, including our CFO, helped reach out to these organizations. Our employees live and work in the communities we serve, so some of the schools that received the vaccine had children of NHMC employees, including Wesley School. “
In a statement released by the hospital, Brown said the hospital intended “a bona fide effort to help essential workers and educators”. He added: “Northridge Hospital remains committed to continuing to support vaccination efforts and to do our part to end the COVID crisis.”
Galles refused to answer questions about any connection between Brown’s position at the school and Wesley’s employees receiving the vaccine.
The union representing teachers in Los Angeles on Friday pointed to the chain of events.
“It’s another reminder of how the system is against low-income black communities and the public schools that serve them,” said Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles in a weekly update broadcast to union members and the public. .
In a statement, Galles said that his school community wants all teachers to be vaccinated.
“We firmly believe that vaccinating educators is essential for students to return to personal learning,” said his statement. “We strongly urge public health officials to prioritize vaccination for all educators.”