Mass. getting a bad deal on mass vaccine sites, state lawmakers say
FOXBORO — Massachusetts is paying more than $1 million per week to the for-profit startup that is running mass vaccination sites at Gillette Stadium and Boston’s Fenway Park, and some southern Massachusetts lawmakers say the state was getting a better deal when shots were being doled out by area health boards.
The more than $625,000 weekly price tag for Gillette includes a minimum weekly payment of $344,575, the Boston Herald reported Friday, citing state documents obtained in a public records request. The Fenway site is costing the state more than $540,000 weekly. Both sites are run by CIC Health, which declined to comment.
State Rep. Jim Hawkins, D-Attleboro, said Friday his city’s own health department did a much better job with the clinic it ran for about 80 local eligible residents at LaSalette Shrine in January.
Keeping that up, he said, “would have done away with the needs for companions,” a widely criticized policy of offering shots to people who accompany elderly patients to mass vaccination sites.
Instead, the state stopped giving vaccine doses to municipalities and local hospitals in favor of the corporate sites and pharmacies.
“Sturdy (Memorial Hospital in Attleboro) is respected in the community and I would trust them to do it right,” Hawkins said. “There is too much of a focus on the corporate for-profits.”
State Rep. Adam Scanlon, D-North Attleboro, a frequent critic of the state’s vaccine efforts, agreed that local health boards were doing a better job at lower costs.
“They should go back to sending local communities vaccines,” the freshman legislator said. “We are going to continue to advocate for that.” He noted that other lawmakers had signed on to that effort.
“We are hopeful some of the surrounding communities are going to be included in a regional collaborative” for vaccines, he said. “That could resolve a lot of the equity issues” around the state’s much-criticized application website.
“Not enough people are getting vaccinated in this area,” Scanlon said, adding he wants to keep pressure on the Baker administration to improve its performance.
That problem is one of supply and demand, said state Sen. Paul Feeney, D-Foxboro, whose district includes the largest mass vaccination site.
He is a little more sympathetic to the issues the administration faced in allocating doses and assessing costs.
“There is no playbook for this, we are all in uncharted territory,” Feeney said.
But he added that the state would have been better off decentralizing the vaccination operation from the beginning.
“Most of the the towns in the district were doing great and councils on aging were taking calls and putting people on wait lists. People were staying close to home,” Feeney said.
Some lawmakers are saying more oversight is needed.
“I am extremely concerned that these private companies are being paid exorbitant amounts of our tax dollars instead of utilizing capable, local cities and towns to assist with distribution,” state Sen. Diana DiZoglio, D-Methuen, told the Herald.
She has called on the state auditor and inspector general to investigate a growing number of no-bid contracts handed out by the state during the pandemic.
Gov. Charlie Baker defended the decision to hire private companies.
“This is a race against time,” he said Thursday, noting local public health infrastructure “had a lot of catching up to do.”
The state failed to provide complete contracts for two other vendors running mass vaccination sites in Massachusetts.
But contracts for Curative – which operates mass vaccination sites in Springfield and Danvers – show the state is paying $45 per shot in addition to covering expenses for security and traffic control. Curative also declined comment.