Health network allowed employees' kin to skip vaccine line

One of Pennsylvania’s largest health networks allowed employees' family members to skip the COVID-19 vaccine line, raising questions of fairness at a time of strong public demand and scarce supply.

Geisinger's decision to give special access to employees’ relatives earned a rebuke this week from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which said the health care giant shouldn’t have held vaccine clinics for eligible family members of employees.

“DOH has been in contact with the provider to ensure that going forward they follow the agreement they signed, or risk losing access to first doses of COVID-19 vaccine," said Maggi Barton, a Health Department spokesperson.

The state agency said it was unaware that Geisinger had arranged for family members to be inoculated until alerted by The Associated Press.

Geisinger said that since the family members who got the shots met the state’s eligibility requirements, it didn’t need to tell the Health Department that it had set aside vaccine for them. Geisinger also insisted it followed state guidelines for vaccine eligibility and administration and said “at no time were we informed that our vaccine program could be at risk."

Geisinger, which has 24,000 employees spread across central and northeastern Pennsylvania, held employee vaccination clinics on three consecutive Sundays in late January and early February. Each employee was permitted to bring two family members, so long as they were eligible under the state’s phased vaccine rollout, Geisinger acknowledged in response to an AP inquiry. Family members did not have to live with the employee to qualify, the health system said.

About 3,600 relatives of Geisinger employees were vaccinated under the program. No additional vaccine clinics for employee family members are...