Hours after debuting their respective COVID-19 vaccination appointment offers on Thursday, two of California’s largest healthcare providers were inundated with a crowd of anxious vaccine seekers, bringing their systems to the breaking point and raising questions on readiness for implementation in the state.
Sutter Health’s website failed and the Kaiser Permanente telephone line warned callers that they could face waiting times of up to four hours, leaving many of the state’s seniors confused and frustrated.
The strong demand for limited life-saving supplies comes at a time when California and its biggest health care providers are trying to speed up the administration of their vaccines to those most at risk of death.
Ranking 43rd in the country for its slow rate of inoculation, California state officials announced on Wednesday that people aged 65 and older would be eligible to receive the vaccine earlier than previously planned, although it is up to the county and health care providers to decide. the speed with which they open appointments for certain age groups and stages of the general public.
Sutter Health, which also owns the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, launched vaccination appointments for Californians at least 75 years of age and health professionals on Thursday morning. Those eligible to receive their first dose were allowed to make appointments via the Sutter call center or the health provider’s My Health Online portal.
But for most of the afternoon, many online users were unable to access the Sutter Health website.
Those who were able to access the home page – even if only briefly – were greeted with a message that read: “System warning: due to the high demand for scheduling vaccines, My Health Online and our call center may be temporarily offline or slowing down ”.
“Please do not call your service center or provider’s office for an appointment. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve these problems, ”he continued.
In the late afternoon, Sutter’s vaccination consultation phone line reached its “calling capacity” and a recording directed patients back to the website for scheduling, which appeared to be working again.
Theresa Carey, 65, of Palo Alto, spent the whole day alternating between the Sutter website and the mobile app, trying to get her and her husband a coveted date. And when she finally managed to log on and answer the scheduling questionnaire late Thursday afternoon, she realized that Sutter had only opened appointments for members of the general public aged 75 or older – not 65.
“We were excited,” said Carey. “… It looks like they are trying to work hard to bring it all together.”
In a statement, Sutter said he would expand eligibility and notify his patients as vaccine supply and consultation capacity increased. Until then, the healthcare provider is asking patients to be patient.
“We share the excitement and hope that comes with the COVID-19 vaccine and are working hard to meet scheduling requests from eligible patients,” the statement said.
Patricia S., 75, of Dublin, said it took about an hour of persistence to get far enough on the Sutter website to make an appointment after he kicked her off the page several times and fed error messages.
“I thought, ‘I can ride this horse to the barn, I can keep doing that,'” she said.
Although she said “it was not a hardship” for someone her age with some free time to spend an hour making an appointment, she added that Sutter, being a major health care provider, “should get along better.”
Kaiser Permanente, which opened a limited consultation offer for Californians aged 65 and over, healthcare professionals and patients and long-term care workers, faced similar problems with four-hour waiting times on its dial-up phone line.
Nancy Thomas, 77, from Newark, waited on hold for more than an hour before making an appointment with Kaiser to receive her first dose of the life-saving vaccine.
The Kaiser representative she spoke to at first offered her an appointment at a San Leandro facility, but the agent said the reservation had disappeared while she was looking at it, probably stolen by someone else. After looking for the next available appointment nearby, Thomas got a spot for the end of next week at Kaiser Santa Clara.
“I would have waited five hours because it is very important for me to get the vaccine,” said Thomas in an interview. “I think that as the word spreads, they will be even more overwhelmed.”
Kaiser currently allows patients to sign up for telephone consultations, but plans to have an online self-service portal next week to give eligible people the opportunity to schedule an appointment online if vaccines are available, according to a company statement. .
“Understandably, current limited vaccine supplies can cause frustration among those who can be vaccinated, but we hope that supplies will increase and allow us to vaccinate more people more quickly,” the statement said.
In addition to the main health care providers in the Bay Area, people were also facing problems with county health departments.
When Mel and Phil Epps, from Lafayette, received an email from the Contra Costa County Health Department on Thursday morning that they could make an appointment to get the vaccine, they were elated and immediately jumped on their computers .
Each on their own devices, they analyzed their questionnaires and received a notification that they both marked a space.
But all was not well.
Mel, 77, had been scheduled for a date in San Pablo, while Phil, 80, had one in Martinez. Nervous about the long drive to an unknown area, Mel spent about an hour calling different phone numbers listed for the health department, without any luck getting a live voice.
“They had another year to set things up and are already having problems with the system,” he said.
“Let’s just say it didn’t do any good for my blood pressure.”