Those contracts not the number of sick or at-risk patients in a practice often determined who got the vaccine first, according to Lance Rodewald, MD, director of the CDC s immunization services division. Larger practices, for example, may be able to demand more concessions from vaccine manufacturers and distributors than smaller practices. Major drugstores and supermarkets may be the wrong place to point fingers anyway, since most don't purchase the vaccine themselves. Rather, they typically provide free space and advertising to local visiting nurses groups, which receive the drug from the Visiting Nurse Associations of America and run the clinics. The overriding VNAA practice is to follow the CDC guidelines of vaccinating high-risk patients first, said Pamela Sawyer, the organization's Vice President of Advancement and Technology.
Most vaccinations occur at an open clinic, where everyone can be vaccinated, but last year . . .
Of course there were problems with people wanting to wait, as soon as you tell someone they can't have it. Those additional costs were typically passed to the customer. Private sector Many have asked why the federal government didn t step in to regulate. This is almost entirely a private sector-run system, says Lance Rodewald, so it's not a system that we have very much influence over. Currently, we don't see a greater government regulation role for influenza vaccine process and distribution.