Kaiser Permanent officials on Friday apologized to their members for the long waiting times of the call center in recent days since the coronavirus vaccine for the 65-year-old parent was expanded.
Limited vaccine supplies have challenged healthcare providers across the country. The Sutter Health website crashed for a while and other providers added automated messages to explain the process in response to the huge interest.
Kaiser’s call centers are overloaded with members wanting to plan the vaccinations for vaccinations. Kaiser officials told The Chronicle that they “do not have enough vaccine supply to meet even a fraction of this demand.”
One Kaiser call center alone received “four times the normal call volume” on Thursday, said Carrie Owen Plietz, president of Kaiser Permanente, Northern California. Kaiser’s hotline for vaccinations received more than 90,000 calls on Thursday, significantly higher than 38,000 calls on Tuesday, Kaiser officials said in a statement to The Chronicle on Friday.
Kaiser members have complained on social media that they have been delayed for hours, sometimes without being scheduled for a vaccination appointment.
Within days of government officials adding residents to include residents 65 and older – who make up 1.4 million Kaiser members in California – Kaiser officials were blunt on Twitter on Friday.
“The COVID-19 vaccine supply is limited and unpredictable,” Kaiser said said on Twitter. “The recent expansion of the state’s admission to individuals over the age of 65 has not yet had any additional stock.”
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Kaiser officials have said they have received an average of about 20,000 first and second doses weekly since early December, but until the vaccine supply increases, it will take several months for all Kaiser members 65 and older in California is, inoculated with both doses.
Speaking at a press conference with San Francisco’s mayor of San Francisco, Owen Plietz at a South Bay Kaiser facility, thanking Kaiser’s members for their patience – jokingly trying to gather some of her own – said officials were “challenging” the ever-changing situation during the pandemic, coupled with limited vaccine supplies.
A vaccine of this size is new to all of us. We also want to acknowledge the frustration that so many of you feel when you try to be vaccinated or understand when you can and when you need to be vaccinated, ‘said Owen Plietz. “New information comes regularly within hours, days, and we are turning around quickly to get vaccinations for everyone in this extraordinary and confusing time.”
Owen Plietz said Kaiser has vaccinated health workers, according to the California-based phased approach, and as of Friday, Kaiser has given first-dose vaccines to more than 90,000 health workers. The figure is increasing every day and every hour, she said.
Kaiser said he fired 120,000 shots in California as of Friday. Owen Plietz said Kaiser has vaccinated more than 9,000 health care workers who are not Kaiser Permanent staff, and more than 1,600 people who are also not Kaiser Permanent members “because we need to work as part of the community to ensure that everyone is vaccinated. ”
“We are committed to ensuring that we act as quickly as possible to provide the vaccine to those who are eligible, and soon to all who wish to receive it,” Owen Plietz said.
Kaiser officials said they expected “major deliveries over the coming weeks” as “production ramps by manufacturers”.
Kaiser officials said they had taken steps to ‘alleviate the situation as we work on more ways to increase access to vaccinations as the offer allows’, such as: promoting staff at a 24-hour call center; inform members who call the line that there are no available vaccine appointments; plans to add an option next week for qualifying members to plan a vaccination appointment themselves “based on vaccine supplies”; contact eligible members with vaccination information; and coordinate officials with local and state agencies to create massive vaccine locations and “reach those most vulnerable in our communities.”
“But we need more vaccination before it can open,” Kaiser officials told The Chronicle in a statement.
Lauren Hernández is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @ByLHernandez