The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) on Wednesday confirmed to the Investigation Unit that it has stopped allocating COVID-19 vaccines to One Medical, one of its main partners in the city’s vaccine launch plan.
One Medical is a member-based medical practice – anyone can join. After partnering with SFDPH, he said he administered vaccines to his own eligible participants and members of the public who were appointed by the county as a temporary member of One Medical.
Prior to receiving this information, the Investigation Unit received reports of individuals paying the $ 200 standard membership fee just to take advantage of One Medical’s easy-to-book vaccine appointment system. In some cases, individuals said they did not live in San Francisco. Some said they already have other health care providers.
The San Francisco movement comes on the same day that NPR launched an investigation saying that “the state-of-the-art medical provider … administered COVID-19 vaccinations to people deemed ineligible … including people with connections to company leaders and its service clients.” concierge ”.
In an e-mail to the Investigation Unit, SFDPH said on Monday that it had instructed One Medical to return 270 ampoules of the Pfizer vaccine containing 1,620 doses so that the county could redistribute them to other suppliers. This came after the county ordered One Medical to provide full accounting of its administered vaccines.
After examining One Medical’s response, the county said the organization vaccinated people who were “under the age of 65 who self-identified as Phase 1a health care workers, but were not IHSS workers, DPH referrals, or employees of a single health care worker. ”
“Because of this and our inability to verify the 1st condition of this cohort, DPH stopped allocating doses to One Medical ”. wrote a county spokesman.
In an interview Wednesday earlier about the challenges One Medical and other providers face when trying to apply vaccine eligibility requirements, Chief Medical Officer Andrew Diamond said there was concern about over-execution.
“There are a lot of people who are most in need of vaccination and would not have the first idea of how to load something. [for verification] “And being too focused on that requirement, we risk vaccinating far fewer people than we really need at the moment,” said Dr. Diamond.
In a statement late Wednesday, a spokesperson for One Medical wrote: “Those we vaccinated in the indefinite“ number ”of doses in question at SFDPH specifically attested that they are eligible medical workers. .. We had permission from SFDPH to vaccinate this group and were transparent with SF DPH about our process and protocols for doing so. “
A doctor was allowed to take enough doses to give the second photo to people who received the first dose, the county said. The SF provider said it hopes to continue providing vaccination services.
Candice Nguyen is an investigative reporter at the NBC Bay Area Investigation Unit. Email her about this story or others at [email protected].