Health provider One Medical, based in San Francisco, was attacked in California, Oregon and Washington for allegedly inoculating young, healthy people who were not eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, including friends and family members of the company’s leadership, and skipped the queue ahead of high-risk patients, according to an NPR investigation.
One Medical offered the vaccine to all San Francisco County employees, regardless of whether they saw patients personally or not, according to NPR.
“In addition, One Medical patients who were not eligible to be vaccinated based on local guidelines were allowed to schedule vaccination appointments through an online portal,” said the NPR. “The same was true of at least one executive from a One Medical partner organization. Internal communications show providers trying to vaccinate qualified health workers, but are instead instructed to put them on the waiting list.”
One Medical is a healthcare provider known for its personalized “concierge service” that accepts a variety of insurance and costs $ 199 annually to join. They have offices in a dozen cities and several in San Francisco.
As a result of the alleged misconduct, the San Francisco Department of Public Health stopped distributing vaccines to One Medical’s offices in the city and asked the provider to return 1,600 doses of vaccine. “Although his response lists 984 of those doses for DPH walk-in and the remaining 636 doses for an ‘Oracle Park mass vaccination launch’, none of these uses are authorized by DPH at this time,” wrote the department in a letter to Um doctor who was shared with ABC 7.
The department is allowing One Medical to administer all second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to patients awaiting their final inoculation.
The letter also said that the department will contact One Medical “if we are ready to allocate additional doses to One Medical for administration at a future date.”
Radio KCBS reported that Alameda County has also suspended supplies for One Medical and Washington State has withdrawn its vaccine supplies from the provider’s offices in the state.
One Medical issued a statement in response to the NPR report. “Any claim that we largely and consciously ignore the eligibility guidelines is in direct contradiction to our real approach to administering the vaccine,” said the statement. “We have several verification points in place – online at the time of booking the consultation, prior to the consultation through an intensive ‘scheduling check’ process and personal verification at the point of care as needed – to mitigate the abuse of Our vaccine reservation. We routinely refuse people who do not meet the eligibility criteria. Our data currently shows that 96% of individuals vaccinated by One Medical have eligibility documentation and the remaining 4% have generally been vaccinated according to zero waste protocols. “
The San Francisco Department of Public Health, the Alameda County Health Department and the California Department of Public Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story. The story will be updated after the answer.