Our statement to the community

As part of our mission to provide compassionate care for every life we touch, Overlake is committed to keeping our community healthy, including safely and efficiently vaccinating as many eligible members of our community as possible. This requires strict adherence to all guidelines set by the Washington State Department of Health for Phase 1A and 1B1. It also means working to reach as many eligible people as we can.

There have been logistical challenges for hospital systems to meet the demands to successfully schedule vaccinations and administer vaccine supply received. Despite these challenges, we have administered 11,000 vaccines to date, and will soon administer vaccines for over 40,000 community members who have upcoming appointments scheduled through our online system.

Recently, in an effort to notify people of additional, immediate-term vaccine appointments that had become available, we sent emails to approximately 4,000 members of the Overlake community, including volunteers, retired nurses and physicians, all employees and about 100 donors from our Foundation database. All communications made clear that people must show proof of eligibility under current Washington State requirements to ultimately be vaccinated, no matter who they are or how they are affiliated with us.

We recognize we made a mistake by including a subset of our donors and by not adopting a broader outreach strategy to fill these appointments, and we apologize. Our intent and commitment has always been to administer every vaccine made available to us safely, appropriately, and efficiently.

Today and throughout this pandemic, Overlake is intently focused on serving our community, including moving forward on larger scale community-based vaccination programs. Additional vaccine allotments from the state will boost this effort as well. No matter what, our goal remains the same: deliver vaccines to eligible community members as quickly as possible.

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J. Michael Marsh
President & CEO, Overlake Medical Center & Clinics