Local: Blue Shield CEO says company will improve California’s vaccine system.
CEO says insurer will closely track doses, from federal government’s allocation to shots in arms
Answering critics attacking his company’s role in the state’s new COVID-10 vaccine plan, the CEO of Blue Shield says he thinks his team can help California improve its distribution system by more closely tracking where vaccine is at all times — from when the federal government allocates it to the state to when shots actually go into arms.
“We’re really set up well to have a successful effort,” CEO Paul Markovich said during a webinar Friday arranged by Singer Associates, a crisis public relations firm brought in when the Oakland-based company was flooded with criticism for stepping into the state’s vaccine program.
California recently tapped the insurance giant for help deciding where to distribute the Golden State’s vaccine, which has set off a wave of protest from counties and community health clinics who complain the company’s role will slow down how vaccines are distributed. Counties almost universally have refused to sign contracts with Blue Shield, pushing for agreements with the state instead.
On Friday, Markovich said that if counties want to work out agreements with the state instead of with his company, that’s “fine byus.”
Regardless, the company, which has signed on to be the state’s vaccine adviser, is poised to play a major role in vaccine distribution, which is expected to be much more centralized. Instead of counties getting the vaccine and deciding which clinics and hospitals to send it to, the state, with Blue Shield’s help, says it plans to specify where the vaccine should go and track the process.
“We felt like we could help save lives,” Markovich said. “The thing that we think we can do best to help is to make sure that the state and all the local health jurisdictions know where the vaccine is at all times.”
Officials and health nonprofits in Santa Clara County in particular have balked at Blue Shield’s involvement and the possibility of losing local control.
“We have the local knowledge,
the relationships and the infrastructure already stood up to get the job done,” Supervisor Susan Ellenberg said during a news conference this week, surrounded by community health clinic leaders who worried that their supply of vaccine — which they currently get from the county — could be cut off under the new system.
But Markovich pointed to a supply shortage the county experienced recently, which forced it to have to stop scheduling
first-dose appointments, as an issue he thinks the company can help solve.
“The state did not have up-to-date, accurate inventory numbers by individual provider and hasn’t up until this point,” he said, “and as a result, some of the big providers like the University of California and Sutter started to run out of vaccine and were not getting allocated doses by the state at the level that they needed to fulfill second-dose appointments, because the state in their data thought that those organizations had a lot of inventory. But in fact they didn’t.
“And so when we discovered that was the case, we
ended up trying to give a lot more doses to those organizations to try to honor those appointments,” Markovich continued. “But in the meantime, that actually created some shortages in other places — like Santa Clara County ended up getting fewer doses than they were expecting of Moderna and then they had a second-dose shortage. And so the ability to know where the vaccine is at all times, know what the inventory is with each provider, allows for a much smoother, more predictable manageable system.”
According to Markovich, California has the capacity to deliver more than 7.5 million
doses a week of vaccine, but supply has recently been closer to 1.6 million doses. The state, he said, expects to get north of 2.5 million doses a week by April, and that figure could rise to 4 million a week as the vaccine manufacturers make more doses.
“The capacity is just not an issue,” he said. “We are more supply constrained.”
Blue Shield, which can bill the state up to $15 million in expenses, is also set to send out performance management
reports evaluating how well various providers do in terms of getting the shots they are given into arms, and sending out multiweek details on the vaccine supply providers can expect so they can avoid the types of cancelations that have plagued the rollout so far.
While Blue Shield says it will focus specifically on equity and getting vaccine to the most vulnerable, some Bay Area organizations that work with vulnerable populations are skeptical, pointing out they have longstanding relationships with local leaders but not the company.
Sarita Kohli, CEO of the community health organization AACI, said working with Santa Clara County has been a success.
“It happens fast and it happens efficiently, and that system has been working really, really well,” she said. “Let’s not try and fix something that isn’t broken.”