The Ongoing Effort to Curtail COVID-19

Helping health-care workers to be vaccinated, so they can care for the rest of us.

When COVID-19 vaccines started to become widely available, it quickly became clear that vaccinating health-care workers had to come first. Only then could our health-care workers safely care for the rest of us. So the Richard King Mellon Foundation gave Excela Health a $250,000 grant in 2021 to roll out an on-site vaccination program for 5,200 employees at Excela Health Frick Hospital, Excela Health Latrobe Hospital, and Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital, as well as Excela Health Medical Group, home care and hospice, and volunteers. Local EMS workers also were eligible for the program. The grant was part of the Foundation’s ongoing efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19 and protect frontline workers.?

The grant allowed hospital employees to receive two dosages of the Pfizer vaccine at their convenience at work. “We offered them at all times of the day because of the limitation of the storage of the vaccine,” said Dr. Carol J. Fox, chief medical officer at Excela Health.?

Excela used the grant to pay for the cost of supplies, anaphylaxis kits, one ultra-cold storage refrigerator, vaccine administration, call-center scheduling, and other costs associated with the vaccine rollout. Excela has subsequently mandated vaccines for employees and outside contractors, with exceptions for those with medical or religious exemptions.?

“The majority of people were happy and appreciative of the opportunity to get it at work,” Dr. Fox said. “The early adopters signed up immediately. They didn’t have to go outside to get it,” at a time when getting a vaccine appointment online often was time-consuming and frustrating.?

Many of the Excela recipients even said ‘thank you’ after receiving the shot—not the usual reaction to a jab in the arm.

The safeguarding of frontline workers became even more crucial as the infection rates in Westmoreland County rose and hospital staff saw an increase in the number of patients with this highly contagious virus. Since?the beginning of the pandemic through?the beginning of May, Excela has cared?for more than 4,000 patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Throughout Westmoreland County, 1,393 people died of COVID-19 as of June 1, 2022, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

"We would like to express our gratitude to the Richard King Mellon Foundation for being there for us. The grant allowed us to be confident that we would have the vaccine for our employees as soon as it became available,” Dr. Fox said.

Excela also has led the response to the pandemic in Westmoreland County, providing schools, colleges, government bodies and businesses information on how to curtail the spread of the virus.

The health system also unveiled a vaccination program to the general public, using the knowledge it learned from the rollout of its employee program. It administered more than 72,000 doses through the end of?March 2022.

“Lessons learned during the initial vaccination program with our employees allowed us?to establish a successful infrastructure to vaccinate the community,” said Denise Addis, Excela Vice President Cardiovascular Service Line, and the health system’s employee flu inoculation program on which the COVID vaccine rollout was modeled.