Eisenhower Health starts mass vaccination clinic for patients 75 years and older

Eisenhower Health is currently vaccinating their patients 75 and older.

News Channel 3’s Caitlin Thropay was at the hospital in Rancho Mirage where these vaccinations have been happening since 8 a.m. Tuesday morning. Eisenhower’s goal is to vaccinate over 1,500 of their patients at this mass vaccination clinic on Tuesday. Monday was actually their first day and they were able to vaccinate 1,200 patients.

A reminder this is not for the general public but right now for Eisenhower patients 75 and older with appointments at this time.

“I’ve never been so excited to get a shot,” Trudi Landreth and Eisenhower patient told News Channel 3.

“We got very quick treatment and it’s surprising it’s so well organized,” 94-year-old Barbara Foster Henderson shared with News Channel 3 after getting her vaccine.

It was a rather smooth process for these Eisenhower patients 75 and older receiving their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

“I was so happy to finally get here," 86-year-old Elaine Rubin said. "It took me two weeks on the computer trying to find out how to do it,” she added.

When these patients check-in at this clinic they also schedule their second dose appointment as well.

“This is for any patient that has an Eisenhower primary care physician or has seen a specialist in our organization since February 2019,” April Lopez, the director of quality and patient safety told News Channel 3.

Patients won’t need to do anything to make an appointment. Eisenhower will reach out to them individually through their “my chart” account.

“The only way for them to schedule is to receive that message and reply to it,” Lopez said.

Eisenhower has been preparing for this mass clinic for days. They tested out the clinic on their staff and volunteers who are now working at this clinic as well as some of the hospital’s donors who fall under the current vaccination tier.

We asked Eisenhower why they chose to vaccine their donors ahead of the general public.

“This is a population that we could easily contact and have here in a quick amount of time," Lopez said. "Our biggest challenge that we’ve found over the last seven days is having someone call every single patient which we have thousands of patients throughout the valley so that phone call takes a minimum of ten minutes so that population was quick and easy to a mass distribution of and get them here and get that procedure tested and make sure what works and what doesn’t," she added.

This clinic is now fully functioning seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

Eisenhower plans to vaccinate all of their patients first and for reference, they have 142,000 patients just over 65 years old so they say it’ll take several months before they can start vaccinating the general public.

“I felt nothing!" 82-year-old, Richard Moore said after getting his vaccine. "The lady that gave it to me said I didn’t even bleed and I said well I didn’t feel anything!” he shared.

As for our other local hospitals, we spoke with Desert Regional Medical Center. They said right now they’re vaccinating their cancer patients who are 65 and older as they come in for their chemo or radiation treatments.

No mass vaccination clinic like this one at Eisenhower is currently in place at Desert Regional.