The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) confirmed to the Investigation Unit on Wednesday that it stopped distributing COVID-19 vaccines to One Medical, one of its main partners in the city’s vaccine distribution plan.
One Medical is a member-based health practice – anyone can participate. After partnering with SFDPH, he said he administered vaccines to his own eligible participants and members of the public who were referred by the county as a temporary member of One Medical.
Prior to receiving this information, the Investigation Unit received reports from people who paid the standard $ 200 membership fee just to take advantage of One Medical’s easy-to-book vaccine booking system. In some cases, individuals said they did not live in San Francisco. Some said they already had other health professionals.
The San Francisco move comes on the same day that NPR released an investigation saying the “high-tech medical provider … administered COVID-19 vaccines to people deemed ineligible … including people with connections to company leaders and customers of your medical concierge service. “
In an email to the Investigation Unit, SFDPH said on Monday that it instructed One Medical to return 270 vials of the Pfizer vaccine containing 1,620 doses so that the county could redistribute them to other suppliers. This was after the county instructed One Medical to provide complete 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 identified themselves as Phase 1a health workers, but were not IHSS workers, DPH referrals or employees of a medical health worker. “
“Because of this and our inability to check the status 1a of this cohort, DPH stopped allocating doses to One Medical ”, a county spokesman wrote.
In an interview on the previous Wednesday about the challenges One Medical and other providers face in trying to enforce the vaccine’s eligibility requirements, medical director Andrew Diamond said there was concern about over-enforcement.
“There are a lot of people who are in dire need of vaccination and would not really have the first idea of how to upload something [for verification] … And because we are overly focused on this requirement, we run the risk of vaccinating far fewer people than we really need right now, ”said Dr. Diamond.
In a statement on Wednesday, a spokesman for One Medical wrote: “Those we vaccinated within the unspecified ‘number’ of doses in question from the SFDPH specifically testified that they were eligible health professionals … We were permitted by the SFDPH vaccinate this group and be transparent with SF DPH about our process and protocols for doing so. “
A doctor was allowed to withhold sufficient doses to apply a second dose to people who received the first dose, the county said. The SF-based provider said it hopes to continue offering vaccination services.
Candice Nguyen is an investigative reporter for the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit. Email her about this story or others at [email protected].