Offering in-person COVID vaccine appointments for qualified nearby residents
Christian Hospital in North St. Louis County is setting aside a couple of hours after work on Tuesdays, and a couple of hours after church on Sundays, for individuals who live nearby and don’t have internet access or are uncomfortable with technology, to make an appointment to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
“The purpose of this is to target those non-digital people in the community that may not be able to sign up electronically, and particularly in ZIP codes or areas around the Christian Hospital Northeast service area,” Jacqueline Randolph, executive director of Ambulatory Services at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, said. “We noticed that in particular ZIP codes and patient populations, we were not getting the response rates that we would like to see in those communities where we knew that COVID was very prevalent and it was a high-risk population that we wanted to make sure that we targeted.”
While people who lived near the hospital were not signing up for the vaccine – people who did not live in North County knew about it and came to Christian to get their COVID vaccine.
“People who were being vaccinated at Christian Northeast were not from those ZIP codes; they were coming from West County and other places and that’s what threw a flag for us,” Randolph said. “Why aren’t we getting people from right here within the Christian Hospital service area registered, scheduled and vaccinated?”
To address that issue, Randolph said they began in-person signups last week. Last Sunday, she said Christian Hospital registered more than 200 nearby residents during its first soft-launch COVID vaccine registration event.
Persons who are making the appointment for a COVID vaccine must also be within the state’s approved phases and tiers for COVID vaccinations to come in-person to make their inoculation appointment – currently at Phase 1B Tier 2 – persons age 65 and older and persons ages 18 to 64 with health conditions making them high risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes, expanding to Tier 3 on March 15, the state previously announced.
When Phase 1B Tier 3 is activated in Missouri, the state estimates it will make an additional 550,000 persons eligible to get the COVID vaccine. This group includes persons who are working in K-12 education, childcare, communications infrastructure, dams, energy , food and agriculture; government, information technology, transportation, water and wastewater systems, nuclear reactors, materials and waste; and others in what the state describes as critical infrastructure (https://covidvaccine.mo.gov/priority/Phase1b/#phase1b-30).
Barnes-Jewish has also opened up in-person signup for COVID vaccine appointments in Ellisville and other locations, including the Metro East.
“We have several sites,” Randolph said. “Over in Illinois, the Memorial Belleville location, a location in Alton, the main campus of Barnes-Jewish Hospital – so we’ve got them all over.”Â
To make an appointment in-person for a COVID vaccine at Christian Hospital, individuals can go to the lobby of the Dietrick Building only on two days – Sundays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. or on Tuesdays from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
“If they meet criteria, we are giving them an appointment when they are there,” Randolph said. “If they do not (meet criteria) then, yes, we take their information, and then we manually put it in the system and preregister them so they can be contacted in the future. We ask for a good phone number.”
Tech savvy counterparts can preregister themselves online to get the vaccine at Christian Hospital at https://bit.ly/3btmZiQ.