Tulsa clinic's chief medical officer pens letter to Gov. Kevin Stitt, pleading for more action

For nine months, Dr. Jeffrey Galles has been one of the men and women within Hillcrest Healthcare System managing its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As Utica Park Clinic’s chief medical officer, Galles worked with his counterparts to keep the system staffed amid contact tracing efforts and keeping up treatment for a growing deluge of patients. More recently, he has helped coordinate vaccination plans for phases 1 and 2 within the health care system.

Early in the pandemic, Galles saw state and federal leadership downplay and critically underestimate COVID-19’s impact. Each reactionary step taken at varying levels of government left Galles wondering if anyone else saw the virus for what it was: a hammer swinging down on the state faster than leadership could or cared to move.

“As we began to see the development of a vaccine and see more of these tools we could use to impact patients’ outcomes, then I got frustrated with the lack of transparency across the health field,” Galles said. “We heard that the states were doing things, but we didn’t really have a lot of input into those decisions and didn’t have a lot of feedback from the state.

Read more: https://tulsaworld.com/tulsa-clinics-chief-medical-officer-pens-letter-to-gov-kevin-stitt-pleading-for-more-action/article_3b6a60de-5204-11eb-ad98-c77f3b9a5180.html