As managed care giant Kaiser Permanente takes a prominent role in California’s new COVID-19 vaccination strategy, it is receiving mixed reviews from members across the country for the way it has managed its own vaccine program in the past two months.
Conversations with 10 Kaiser registrants in five states – Colorado, Washington, Virginia, Maryland and California – revealed a common frustration: difficulty getting an appointment. Many also described receiving sporadic and sometimes confusing information from the company, although some said that Kaiser has improved recently.
Everyone who spoke to California Healthline was over 65 years old. Many were former members of Kaiser and, in addition to the vaccine distribution, had positive views on the health care system. Some ended up going elsewhere for their photos; others said they would wait for Kaiser because their services were familiar to them and they felt more comfortable going there than elsewhere. (Kaiser Health News is an independent editorial program by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)
Kaiser Chief Executive Greg Adams acknowledged the frustrations of his California company’s patients on January 30 the e-mail, explaining that the health system had received only a small fraction of the vaccine supply it needed.
Members did not blame Kaiser for the lack of vaccines, noting that insufficient supplies have been the downfall of suppliers across the country. But Kaiser could have been quicker in administering the vaccines it received and should have communicated more clearly about the shortage, they said.
Nino Maida, a San Francisco resident who has been a member of the Kaiser for 14 years, said he could not find out why he was unable to make an appointment. “The frustration lasted for about a month, until I received a clear indication from Kaiser that any waiting was due to a lack of vaccine,” said Maida, 74. “I thought they were being very inefficient, rather than just poor in communication. ”.
A Kaiser spokesman defended the company’s communication strategy, saying that a page on its website provides detailed responses on vaccine eligibility and nominations, and that a link prominently displayed on the Kaiser home page directs people there. The organization sends regular emails to members with information about their eligibility and instructions on how to make an appointment, and call center operators can also answer members’ questions, he said.
Clearly, Kaiser Permanente is not the only organization facing barriers to vaccination. Sutter Health, the great health care system in Northern California, for example, had to cancel 40,000 vaccination appointments last week because it did not have enough vaccine on hand, a company spokesman said.
But Kaiser, which is an insurance company and provider of medical services, has attracted particular scrutiny because of its size and because it was chosen to play a significant role in the state’s efforts to accelerate COVID-19 vaccinations.
The company, which covers 12.4 million people in the United States, including 9.3 million Californians, was cited by Cal / OSHA and fined nearly $ 500,000 for safety violations in the workplace at the beginning of the pandemic.
ONE Memorandum of Understanding with the state-owned company, released last week, stipulates that Kaiser will be part of a vaccination network set up and supervised by Blue Shield of California, which signed a contract on February 1 to administer the inoculation plan across the state. Kaiser will also act as a consultant for Blue Shield to help the state fulfills its objective to expand access to the vaccine to the most vulnerable communities, says the memo.
Under the agreement, Kaiser will not receive funds from the state. He will operate two mass vaccination sites – one at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, the other in Cal Poly Pomona, Los Angeles County – and “may consider establishing future mass vaccination sites” that would target rural Californians and those with historically lower vaccination rates. More importantly, Kaiser will vaccinate partners and non-partners, as it has been doing on a smaller scale.
The memo acknowledges the supply restrictions that Kaiser faced, saying that the state “must ensure that Blue Shield understands that Kaiser depends on sufficient supply of the vaccine”.
Kaiser did not start vaccinating people aged 65 or older – according to state guidelines – until well after other providers started to do so. And some former Kaiser members were disappointed by the delay.
“It is not good PR to have week after week of news showing the four largest health care providers in Northern California, and Kaiser is the only one who is still working with employees and people over 75,” said Elizabeth Wieland, 66 , from Elk Grove, California, member for 30 years.
When Kaiser sent a e-mail to patients on February 13 encouraging them to “get vaccinated somewhere outside Kaiser Permanente”, if possible, it looked like they were “throwing in the towel,” said Wieland. “It is ‘taking care of yourself’. It is not what I expected, but this seems to be the new normal. “
On February 20, Adams sent a update to members informing them that the outlook for supply had improved, because “the state has increased Kaiser Permanente’s weekly vaccine allocation to better match the number of members we serve.” As a result, said the CEO, Kaiser was able to start scheduling appointments for people aged 65 and over.
Kaiser is also vaccinating people aged 65 and over in Washington, Virginia and Georgia, a spokesman said.
Members’ complaints were not just about slow implementation. Members said that Kaiser sometimes posted important vaccination information in hard-to-find places and that they often heard things by word of mouth before they heard from the company. Some said that as soon as they were able to sign up for the vaccination, email updates were promised that never arrived. Still others said that, after joining Kaiser’s vaccination waiting list, they were suddenly pushed back in line with no explanation.
Janet Vorwerk, a retired nurse from the Kaiser operating room who lives in a Denver suburb, said that when she entered the Kaiser waiting list in January, she was number 20,991 in the queue. On February 15, it rose to 9,989, but inexplicably dropped to 11,258 two days later, which she said was “so disheartening”. On Friday, she had number 10,269.
“I don’t understand how the numbers are increasing, up and down,” said Vorwerk, 66. Still, she blames the circumstances more than Kaiser. “I understand where they are coming from,” she said. “You can’t get a vaccine out of your ass. But at the same time, it would be nice to have a better idea of when this can happen. “
Some members said that Kaiser’s performance has improved recently.
For Tom Spradley, an 84-year-old resident of Citrus Heights, California, the initial frustration with Kaiser gave way to a happy ending. He said he called Kaiser for an appointment about a month ago and was on hold for two hours before giving up. He then started checking Kaiser’s vaccines page every day for updates, but said none appeared for several days.
Finally, he got an appointment for him and his wife on a Kaiser website in Sacramento, about 20 minutes away. The appointment, he said, was a model of efficiency. They received their first injections and were scheduled for their second doses on March 12.
“After a week of bad information on how to get a chance, I think they really did and I was very impressed with the work they did,” said Spradley.
This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, a national newsroom that provides detailed coverage of health issues and is one of the Kaiser’s Family Foundation’s three main operational programs. KHN is the publisher of California Healthline, a service editorially independent of the California Health Care Foundation.