The increasingly frustrating case of Loretto Hospital's questionable COVID-19 vaccinations
Loretto Hospital has been part of the Austin community area since 1923. Even as the population of Austin and the surrounding neighborhoods/suburbs, it continued to act as a "safety met" hospital, with the lion's share of the patients having no insurance or some kind of Medicare/Medicaid coverage. Suffice to say, a large number of patients are either black or Hispanic. The City of Chicago made a point of giving first COVID-19 vaccinations at Loretto precisely because it wanted to send a message that it cared about people in the community, and that they wouldn't get left out of vaccinations. When Protect Chicago Plus set up mass vaccination sites in Austin, Loretto was chosen as one of the partner hospitals. Loretto also vaccinated nursing students at Malcolm X College, inmates at the Cook County Jail, residents of affordable senior housing developments and homeless people.
Loretto Hospital
As with other safety net hospitals, one kind of expects Loretto to bend the rules for the sake of taking care of patients. Like how Cook County Hospital routinely looked the other way when its poorer patients didn't pay their bills. Oh how, when vaccinating homeless people, Loretto staff put the hospital address in the required "address" line.
On Tuesday, Block Club Chicago reported that, on March 10, Loretto Hospital vaccinated workers at the hotel portion of Chicago's Trump Tower (the tower has a hotel portion and a condo portion). The problem with that is that, under the vaccine eligibility guidelines that are in place until March 29, only people 65 and older, certain categories of essential workers and people living in certain community areas could get the vaccines. Hotel workers aren't currently on the list of eligible essential workers, and while it's entirely possible that some of them were eligible for mass vaccinations under Protect Chicago Plus, it quickly became clear that no one even tried checking that.
And, to be honest, that didn't bother me. It still doesn't. By the nature of their job, hotel workers are at higher risk of getting infected. They are statistically more likely to live in communities facing medical care disparities. Eric Trump may have gotten vaccinated in the process was more troubling. So was the very real possibility that the whole thing came about because Dr. Anosh Ahmed, Loretto's Chief Operating Officer owns a condo in the building. But since hotel workers were, for the most part, the ones who benefited, I still wasn't too bothered by it.
But the revelations kept on coming. The next day, WBEZ reported that Cook County judges, who were likewise ineligible, got vaccinated through Loretto. The county courts have been operating remotely throughout the pandemic. An argument could be made that the city guidelines are somewhat arbitrary in this regard - why did aldermen and city clerk's office staff get vaccinated but the judges didn't - but one could also argue that aldermen and city clerk staff have to interact with people a lot more than judges do right now.
Then, last Friday, Block Club Chicago reported that Loretto vaccinated the 204 members of the congregation of the Valley Kingdom International Ministries, a church in south suburban Oak Brook. Loretto CEO George Miller is friends with the church leader and a member of their congregation. To make the situation worse, they got their first dose in February 6, when the vaccine supply was much smaller and seniors and essential workers have only been able to get vaccines for less than two weeks.
Per Block Club, Miller wrote in a newsletter to the hospital staff that all of the congregation members who got vaccinated either lived or worked in Chicago, but that in itself isn't enough to qualify them.
By that point, the city already announced that it wasn't going to give Loretto any more COVID-19 doses until the city "can confirm their vaccination strategies and reporting practices meet all [Chicago Department of Public Health] requirements." It explicitly didn't affect the Protect Chicago Plus site Loretto is administering, but that still struck me as counter-intuitive. That's still one less West Side vaccination site, and West Side doesn't have that many of those. The only way to stop the pandemic is to give SARS-CoV-2 fewer patients it can infect, and that just slows down the process and increases risk.
On Friday afternoon, Loretto posted this
We have expiring vaccines that anyone from the City of Chicago can get right now at the Loretto Hospital until 5:30. We have limited supply. Registration on site. Stay tuned for more updates.
Posted by Loretto Hospital - Chicago, IL on Friday, March 19, 2021
In other words, they opened up their vaccine stocks to all Chicagoans, regardless of age or occupation. Austinites were already eligible under Protect Chicago Plus, and I can tell you that the annoucement spread like wildfire through Austin public groups, so, hopefully, a lot of them benefited. But I do wonder about people in other neighborhoods that were close enough to Loretto that they'd be able to make it before the deadline on the short notice. North Lawndale, Montclare, Humboldt Park and South Lawndale/Little Village are already part of Protect Chicago Plus. Residents of West and East Garfield Parks can get vaccinated at United Center, but for West Garfield Park, at least, Loretto is objectively closer. So I figure that it didn't benefit too many people who weren't already facing higher risks.
Still, the fact that Loretto seemed to deliberately try to get rid of all the doses it had at that point in one go seemed... weirdly defiant. Like "so you want to cut off our vaccine supply? Well, we're going out with a bang!"
Since then, the hole Loretto dug itself in has only gotten deeper. Just this morning, Block Club Chicago reported that employees of an upscale watch shop where Ahmed is a frequent customer got vaccinated through Loretto back on March 3. And he allegedly got the shop owner vaccinated at some point before January, back when the doses were only supposed to go to medical workers and residents of long-term care families.
Incidentally, the fact that a Chief Operating Officer of a hospital that struggled financially even before the pandemic has enough money to not only buy a condo at Trump Tower but spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on watches... is really not a good look.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if more incidents like this emerge. And I also wouldn't be surprised if the city will allow Loretto to start vaccinating patients again... within four weeks at most. You can count the number of hospitals and clinics at or near Austin on fingers of a single hand, Per the city's official vaccination sites map, there are currently eight vaccination sites in the entire Austin community area (10 if you count the Protect Chicago Plus vaccination sites, which the city map doesn't). It's small wonder that Loretto didn't feel any particular pressure to dump Miller or Ahmed.
And bear in mind that none of this would've even been an issue if we had a larger vaccine supplies. Narrow requirements are products of trying to figure out the best way to use the supply the city has. Vaccinating medical workers first, then prioritizing elderly and people in care homes makes sense. But after that, things start to get dicier. Should bus drivers get priority over cancer patients under 65 years of age? Should K-12 teachers get priority ahead of hotel workers? Those aren't trivial examples. Those are differences between the current phase and the next phase of Chicago vaccination.
One thing for sure - Loretto would've been better off, PR-wise, if its executives only used clout to vaccinate hotel workers.
Loretto Hospital
As with other safety net hospitals, one kind of expects Loretto to bend the rules for the sake of taking care of patients. Like how Cook County Hospital routinely looked the other way when its poorer patients didn't pay their bills. Oh how, when vaccinating homeless people, Loretto staff put the hospital address in the required "address" line.
On Tuesday, Block Club Chicago reported that, on March 10, Loretto Hospital vaccinated workers at the hotel portion of Chicago's Trump Tower (the tower has a hotel portion and a condo portion). The problem with that is that, under the vaccine eligibility guidelines that are in place until March 29, only people 65 and older, certain categories of essential workers and people living in certain community areas could get the vaccines. Hotel workers aren't currently on the list of eligible essential workers, and while it's entirely possible that some of them were eligible for mass vaccinations under Protect Chicago Plus, it quickly became clear that no one even tried checking that.
And, to be honest, that didn't bother me. It still doesn't. By the nature of their job, hotel workers are at higher risk of getting infected. They are statistically more likely to live in communities facing medical care disparities. Eric Trump may have gotten vaccinated in the process was more troubling. So was the very real possibility that the whole thing came about because Dr. Anosh Ahmed, Loretto's Chief Operating Officer owns a condo in the building. But since hotel workers were, for the most part, the ones who benefited, I still wasn't too bothered by it.
But the revelations kept on coming. The next day, WBEZ reported that Cook County judges, who were likewise ineligible, got vaccinated through Loretto. The county courts have been operating remotely throughout the pandemic. An argument could be made that the city guidelines are somewhat arbitrary in this regard - why did aldermen and city clerk's office staff get vaccinated but the judges didn't - but one could also argue that aldermen and city clerk staff have to interact with people a lot more than judges do right now.
Then, last Friday, Block Club Chicago reported that Loretto vaccinated the 204 members of the congregation of the Valley Kingdom International Ministries, a church in south suburban Oak Brook. Loretto CEO George Miller is friends with the church leader and a member of their congregation. To make the situation worse, they got their first dose in February 6, when the vaccine supply was much smaller and seniors and essential workers have only been able to get vaccines for less than two weeks.
Per Block Club, Miller wrote in a newsletter to the hospital staff that all of the congregation members who got vaccinated either lived or worked in Chicago, but that in itself isn't enough to qualify them.
By that point, the city already announced that it wasn't going to give Loretto any more COVID-19 doses until the city "can confirm their vaccination strategies and reporting practices meet all [Chicago Department of Public Health] requirements." It explicitly didn't affect the Protect Chicago Plus site Loretto is administering, but that still struck me as counter-intuitive. That's still one less West Side vaccination site, and West Side doesn't have that many of those. The only way to stop the pandemic is to give SARS-CoV-2 fewer patients it can infect, and that just slows down the process and increases risk.
On Friday afternoon, Loretto posted this
We have expiring vaccines that anyone from the City of Chicago can get right now at the Loretto Hospital until 5:30. We have limited supply. Registration on site. Stay tuned for more updates.
Posted by Loretto Hospital - Chicago, IL on Friday, March 19, 2021
In other words, they opened up their vaccine stocks to all Chicagoans, regardless of age or occupation. Austinites were already eligible under Protect Chicago Plus, and I can tell you that the annoucement spread like wildfire through Austin public groups, so, hopefully, a lot of them benefited. But I do wonder about people in other neighborhoods that were close enough to Loretto that they'd be able to make it before the deadline on the short notice. North Lawndale, Montclare, Humboldt Park and South Lawndale/Little Village are already part of Protect Chicago Plus. Residents of West and East Garfield Parks can get vaccinated at United Center, but for West Garfield Park, at least, Loretto is objectively closer. So I figure that it didn't benefit too many people who weren't already facing higher risks.
Still, the fact that Loretto seemed to deliberately try to get rid of all the doses it had at that point in one go seemed... weirdly defiant. Like "so you want to cut off our vaccine supply? Well, we're going out with a bang!"
Since then, the hole Loretto dug itself in has only gotten deeper. Just this morning, Block Club Chicago reported that employees of an upscale watch shop where Ahmed is a frequent customer got vaccinated through Loretto back on March 3. And he allegedly got the shop owner vaccinated at some point before January, back when the doses were only supposed to go to medical workers and residents of long-term care families.
Incidentally, the fact that a Chief Operating Officer of a hospital that struggled financially even before the pandemic has enough money to not only buy a condo at Trump Tower but spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on watches... is really not a good look.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if more incidents like this emerge. And I also wouldn't be surprised if the city will allow Loretto to start vaccinating patients again... within four weeks at most. You can count the number of hospitals and clinics at or near Austin on fingers of a single hand, Per the city's official vaccination sites map, there are currently eight vaccination sites in the entire Austin community area (10 if you count the Protect Chicago Plus vaccination sites, which the city map doesn't). It's small wonder that Loretto didn't feel any particular pressure to dump Miller or Ahmed.
And bear in mind that none of this would've even been an issue if we had a larger vaccine supplies. Narrow requirements are products of trying to figure out the best way to use the supply the city has. Vaccinating medical workers first, then prioritizing elderly and people in care homes makes sense. But after that, things start to get dicier. Should bus drivers get priority over cancer patients under 65 years of age? Should K-12 teachers get priority ahead of hotel workers? Those aren't trivial examples. Those are differences between the current phase and the next phase of Chicago vaccination.
One thing for sure - Loretto would've been better off, PR-wise, if its executives only used clout to vaccinate hotel workers.