Hospitals under fire for shot favoritism

Supporters receive vaccines while seniors wait for appointments

Another South Florida hospital is coming under scrutiny for offering COVID-19 vaccines to its supporters while seniors keep struggling to book appointments through broken phone systems and crashed websites.

Baptist Health, whose list of hospitals includes three in Boca Raton and Boynton Beach, appears to be among a string of South Florida hospitals who’ve reached out to people to offer the vaccine. Baptist Health has directly reached out to numerous people, including “established Baptist Health supporters” who are 65 or over, to set up appointments, according to a statement from the hospital.

Amid the slow vaccine rollout, questions have been raised about hospitals giving preferential treatment to supporters, allowing them to bypass getting appointments through backlogged systems.

In response, Baptist Health said the first priority has been providing vaccinations for front-line medical workers. Simultaneously, it is reaching out to numerous other groups, including family members who live with front-line medical workers and hospital volunteers, as long as they’re 65 or older. BocaNewsNow.com reported that the offer was made to hospital donors.

Baptist Health said it expected to provide 12,000 first-dose vaccinations on Friday, focused on frontline workers. Additionally, 13,000 “community members” registered to receive vaccinations at Hilton Miami Dadeland.

Baptist Health’s hospitals in

Palm Beach County are Boca Raton Regional Hospital, as well as Bethesda Hospital East and Besthesda Hospital West in Boynton Beach.

Throughout South Florida, wealthy donors have received preferential treatment at numerous hospitals. The Miami Herald reported that donors were able to get prioritized access at Jackson Health, Mount Sinai Medical Center as well as Baptist Health. Some hospitals have reached out to wealthy donors who met the state’s criteria and offered them the vaccine, the Herald found.

Whether the vaccine distribution has been fair and equitable across Florida has been a rising concern.

MorseLife Health System, a senior living center in West Palm Beach, made vaccines available to wealthy board members, even though the vaccines had been intended for residents and staff, according to an article in the Washington Post.

Gov. Ron DeSantis raised concerns of the inequity of wealthy donors jumping the line at MorseLife during a news conference Thursday, saying the state started an investigation “as soon as we found out about it.”

“The Governor has been very clear that vaccine should only be administered to Florida’s seniors 65 and older, frontline health care workers, and long-term care facility residents and staff,” a state spokeswoman said Friday.

Sen. Rick Scott also raised issue with Morselife, calling for a congressional investigation into the health care system. “It is absolutely disgusting and immoral that anyone would take vaccines intended for nursing homes to distribute them to their friends,” Scott tweeted.

These issues come amid a sluggish start to vaccine distribution across the state. Seniors have struggled to book appointments, due in part to limited supply and communication failures, including the phone booking system for the state health department in Palm Beach County, which “absolutely died.” As a result, the health department is only accepting vaccination requests via email and those who request appointments may not hear back for “weeks to months,” a health department official said.