San Mateo County and Alameda County say they have stopped allocating additional vaccines to One Medical, a SF-based national health practice, the County Research Unit confirmed Thursday.
One Medical is a national healthcare provider with patients who pay $ 199 to become new members. On Wednesday, our team reported that the San Francisco County Department of Public Health (SFDPH) sanctioned One Medical for vaccinating ineligible patients and planning unauthorized vaccination events, such as walk-ins and a mass release of Oracle Park.
We received this information after asking SFDPH about the reports we received from people who paid the fee just to take advantage of the organization’s easy-to-book vaccine appointment system.
Read: SF penalizes a doctor for vaccinating ineligible patients
On Thursday, the San Mateo County spokesman sent out a statement saying the county received a complaint and found that One Medical was using vaccines to vaccinate 70 ineligible people. The county quickly stopped providing One Medical vaccines on Feb. 5, the spokesman wrote, and terminated its agreement with the practice.
In response, the company said in a statement that “in good faith – they vaccinated a group of public school teachers that their school superintendent had referred to One Medical.”
Alameda County officials said in late January that they had allocated hundreds of doses to One Medical, but after learning that the practice planned to vaccinate more than its health workers, they stopped distributing it.
On Thursday, One Medical said it did not receive information that it would not receive future assignments from Alameda County. NBC Bay Area contacted county officials for clarification.
“Problems with One Medical were disappointing, but they are not representative of the county’s strong and successful vaccination effort,” San Mateo County officials said in a statement.
In response to county sanctions, One Medical issued a statement saying, “Those we have vaccinated within the unspecified ‘number’ of doses in question. [San Francisco Department of Public Health] they have specifically certified that they were eligible health workers. “
“We had permission from SFDPH to vaccinate this group and we were transparent with SFDPH about our process and protocols for doing so,” One Medical said. “We are proud of our team’s firm dedication to doing everything possible to save lives at this critical time.”
Candice Nguyen is an investigative journalist in the NBC Bay Area. Email her about this story or others at [email protected]