Healthcare provider One Medical in San Francisco has come under fire in California, Oregon and Washington for allegedly vaccinating young, healthy people who were not eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, including friends and family of the company. leadership, and skipped the line in front of high-risk patients, according to a study by NPR.
One physician offered the vaccine to all of his San Francisco County staff members, regardless of whether they saw patients in person, according to NPR.
“Furthermore, patients from One Medical who were unable to be vaccinated based on local guidelines were allowed to discuss vaccinations through an online portal,” NPR said. “So was at least one executive member of a partner organization at One Medical. Providers of internal communications programs are trying to get eligible health workers vaccinated, but are being told to put them on a waiting list.”
One Medical is a healthcare provider known for its personal ‘concierge service’ that accepts a variety of insurance policies and costs $ 199 annually. They have offices in a dozen cities and several in San Francisco.
Due to the alleged misconduct, the San Francisco Department of Public Health stopped allocating vaccines to One Medical offices in the city and asked the provider to return 1,600 vaccine doses. “Although your response contains 984 of these doses for intrusion from DPH and the remaining 636 doses for an ‘Oracle Park Mass Vaccination Launch’, none of the applications have been approved by DPH at this time,” the department wrote in ‘ a letter to One medical who shared ABC 7.
The department allows One Medical to administer all second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to patients awaiting their final vaccination.
The letter also states that the department will contact One Medical “if we are ready to allocate additional doses to One Medical for administration at a future date.”
KCBS Radio reported that Alameda County also suspended its supplies to One Medical and the state of Washington withdrew its vaccine supply from the state’s supplier offices.
One Medical issued a statement in response to the NPR report. “Any allegations that we broadly and knowingly disregard the guidelines are contrary to our actual approach to vaccine administration,” the statement said. “We have numerous checkpoints in place – online during the appointment booking, prior to the appointment via a labor-intensive ‘schedule scanning’ process, and personal verification at the care point if necessary – to abuse our vaccine booking system. We show people regularly “Our data currently shows that nationwide, 96% of individuals vaccinated by One Medical have eligible documents, and the remaining 4% are generally vaccinated according to zero waste protocols.”
The San Francisco Department of Public Health, the Alameda County Department of Health, and the California Department of Public Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story. The story will be updated when you hear it again.