Jay Frost: Impressed with efficient vaccine operation at LRGH

To The Daily Sun,

I want to give a round of high fives to the management and staff at Lakes Region General Hospital who are coordinating the administration of COVID-19 vaccines. I was one of the group 1b seniors who signed up early for my first dose. I successfully registered within minutes after sign-ups went online and selected LRGH as a preferred site (listed as an option) and chose a date and time, which were confirmed in an e-mail.

Three days later, I received an email from CDC cancelling my appointment, less than 24 hours before I was to show up. Here we go, I thought — I’m another victim of a blundering health care bureaucracy. (I was informed that the system had inadvertently listed LRGH as a public access vaccine site which at the time it was not.)

Fortunately, the state and LRGH recovered quickly and rescheduled appointments — at LRGH — for all of those affected by the snafu. I received my first dose just three days after my original appointment.

When I showed up at the hospital, I was absolutely amazed at how quickly LRGH personnel had been able to schedule new appointments, organize an infrastructure (I got a call at 8:30 p.m. to schedule for 9 a.m. the next morning), and administer the vaccines for several hundred recipients in a safe and well-coordinated assembly-line fashion. There was no waiting — I was inoculated five minutes ahead of my appointed time.

Hats off to all LRGH personnel involved in the process — from the parking attendants and intake workers to the inoculation specialists and discharge staff. You were all efficient, cheerful, and accommodating. Proof that, with the right people in place, our health care system can perform at a high level under intense pressure.

Thanks again for all that you do!

Jay Frost

Meredith