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Plan B is in the Works for California Vaccinations
Health insurance giant Blue Shield of California will be the outside administrator tasked with ramping up coronavirus vaccinations, the California Department of Public Health announced this week. This effort up to now has been slow, overly complicated and plagued by confusion.
Another major healthcare provider, Kaiser Permanente, will also help in the effort to deliver vaccines speedily and equitably across the state of nearly 40 million residents, the health department said. Both are Oakland-based nonprofit companies.
The contract with Blue Shield is still being finalized but its task is to “create, contract with and manage a statewide vaccine administration network” and to allocate doses directly to providers, which will include pharmacies, public/private health networks and hospitals, pop-up sites and community health centers with an eye toward equity, according to the statement.
Blue Shield has an extensive network of providers, contracting with tens of thousands of physicians and hundreds of hospitals throughout the state. Kaiser has its own health insurance plans as well as medical offices.
Currently, the state allocates doses to county public health departments and hospital networks, which have individual appointment systems and eligibility requirements. As a result, some counties and providers are vaccinating anyone 65 and older while others are only vaccinating patients 75 and older, resulting in confused and frustrated residents.
State officials also say there is no uniform information on where doses remain unused or who has been vaccinated. However, the hope is that Blue Shield as well as a new state notification and appointment system will alleviate that data disconnect.
This announcement comes on the heels of Gov. Gavin Newsom abruptly changing the way the state is administering scarce vaccines, saying earlier this week it would play a more centralized role in notifying residents, scheduling appointments and determining eligibility. While there’s a national vaccine shortage, California also needs to administer more of the doses it does have, said state officials. California is administering about 125,000 vaccinations every weekday.
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