The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) on Wednesday confirmed to the Research Unit that it has stopped allocating COVID-19 vaccines to One Medical, one of its main partners in the city’s vaccine deployment plan. .
One Medical is a member-based medical practice: anyone can participate. After partnering with SFDPH, he said he administered vaccines to his own eligible participants and members of the public that the county referred to as a temporary member of One Medical.
Prior to receiving this information, the Research Unit received reports of people paying the standard $ 200 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 had other health care providers.
The San Francisco measure comes on the same day that NPR published an investigation saying the “high-end medical provider … administered COVID-19 vaccines to people considered ineligible … including people with connections to leaders of companies and customers of their concierge medical service “.
In an email to the Research Unit, SFDPH said Monday it directed One Medical to return 270 vials of the Pfizer vaccine containing 1620 doses so 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 reviewing One Medical’s response, the county said the organization had vaccinated people who were “under the age of 65 who self-identified as Phase 1 health care workers, but who were not IHSS workers, DPH referrals, or employees of a physician’s health worker.
“Because of this and our inability to verify the 1st status of this cohort, DPH has 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 enforce eligibility requirements for the vaccine, medical director Andrew Diamond said there is concern about over-compliance.
“There are a lot of people who need a vaccine more and who wouldn’t really have the first idea of how to hang something [for verification] … and by being too focused on that requirement, we risk vaccinating far fewer people than we really need right now, ”Dr. Diamond said.
In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, a spokesman for One Medical wrote: “Those we have vaccinated within the unspecified ‘number’ of doses in question in the SFDPH have specifically certified that they were eligible health workers … We had permission of the SFDPH to vaccinate this group and be transparent with SF DPH about our process and protocols for doing so. “
A doctor was allowed to withhold enough doses to provide second vaccines to people who had the first dose, the county said. The SF-based provider said it hopes to continue offering vaccination services.
Candice Nguyen is an investigative journalist for the NBC Bay Area Research Unit. Email her about this story or others at [email protected].