Clinic received thousands of extra doses of H1N1 vaccine

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DENVER - At a time when Denver County doesn't even have enough H1N1 vaccine to reschedule well over a dozen previously-postponed flu shot clinics, one relatively small Denver pediatrician's office has found itself with more supply than some of the largest Denver hospitals.

Lowry Pediatrics has a staff of two doctors and two nurses, yet somehow that office has received more than 3,000 doses of H1N1 vaccine. It only asked the county for 1,000 doses.

To put the 3,000 doses into perspective, that's more than the total number of doses received at hospitals like Presbyterian/St. Luke's, St. Joseph, St. Anthony Central and National Jewish.

To top it all off, Tuesday morning the two doctors at Lowry Pediatrics received 600 more doses.

"We keep asking, 'Why are we getting more?'" Dr. Whitney Short said.

It's a question 9NEWS asked of the director of Denver Public Health on Tuesday.

"We made a mistake on this one," Dr. Chris Urbina said. "We will try to not make it happen again."

In all, he said Denver County has received only 70,000 doses of the vaccine.

It's a number that's far short of the 200,000 doses he was hoping to have right now.

The low supply has caused Urbina's office to postpone 17 previously-scheduled vaccine clinics.

Urbina couldn't tell us if a simple clerical error led to the mistake. He also couldn't tell us why no one caught the mistake earlier.

Short's office isn't close to being one of the largest in the city.

Urbina says his office will now try to review all of the previously-filled orders to make sure the Lowry issue isn't indicative of a larger problem in the distribution of the vaccine.

He said he doesn't expect to find anything systematically wrong, but he wants to make sure.

"This is a lesson learned," he said.

Reporters note:

I would like to clarify the role of Lowry Pediatrics in this story.

Tuesday morning, an employee at Lowry Pediatrics called 9NEWS to tell us about an issue she felt needed to be addressed. As we looked into the issue, it became quite clear that this was an extreme example of uneven vaccine distribution. Lowry Pediatrics employees have assured us on a number of occasions that there was never an intention to make a profit from a planned flu shot clinic. In fact, their decision to come forward with the story has now resulted in a statewide review of all previous H1N1 vaccine orders.

In addition, it now appears as if the owners of Lowry Pediatrics will be talking with Denver Public Health on Wednesday to discuss an equitable distribution of the vaccine.

Should anyone have any additional concerns, I encourage them to e-mail me directly at chris.vanderveen@9news.com.