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San Mateo County and Alameda County said they had stopped allocating additional vaccines to One Medical, a national health care firm based in SF, the counties investigation unit confirmed Thursday. .
One Medical is a national healthcare provider whose patients pay $ 199 to become new members. On Wednesday, our team reported that the San Francisco County Department of Public Health (SFDPH) penalized One Medical for vaccinating ineligible patients and scheduling unauthorized vaccination events, such as walk-in visits and a Oracle Park mass vaccination launch.
We received this information after interviewing SFDPH on reports we received from people paying the fee just to take advantage of the easy-to-book vaccine appointment system.
Read: SF penalizes doctor for vaccinating ineligible patients
On Thursday, the San Mateo County spokesperson issued a statement saying the county had received a complaint and found that One Medical had used vaccines to vaccinate 70 ineligible people. The county quickly stopped providing One Medical vaccines on February 5, the spokesperson wrote, and ended its agreement with the practice.
In response, the company said in a statement that they “in good faith – vaccinated a group of public school teachers who had been referred to One Medical by their school principal.”
Alameda County officials said at the end of January that they had allocated hundreds of dozen to One Medical, but after learning the practice was to vaccinate more than their health workers, they stopped the distribution.
On Thursday, One Medical said it had not received any information that it would not receive future allowances from Alameda County. The NBC Bay area is in the process of contacting county officials for clarification.
“The issues with One Medical have been disappointing but are not representative of the county’s robust and successful vaccination effort,” San Mateo County officials said in a statement.
In response to the county sanctions, One Medical released a statement saying, “Those we have vaccinated in the unspecified ‘number’ of doses in question of the [San Francisco Department of Public Health] specifically certified that they were eligible healthcare workers. “
“We had permission from SFDPH to vaccinate this group and have been transparent with SFDPH about our process and protocols for doing so,” One Medical said. “We are proud of our team’s unwavering dedication to doing our best to save lives at this critical time.
Candice Nguyen is an investigative reporter for NBC Bay Area. Email him about this story or others at [email protected]
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