Sutter is canceling up to 90K vaccine appointments

Sutter Health says it may have to cancel or postpone about 90,000 coronavirus vaccine appointments across its system because it has not received enough supply, a company spokeswoman said Tuesday.

The health care giant has said it will try to reschedule appointments when possible, but the timeline depends on when the state and Blue Shield, which has been tapped to spearhead a centralized vaccine distribution program in California, give them the doses.

The cancellations are a mix of first and second dose appointments, although Sutter says it is prioritizing getting people awaiting their second dose rescheduled. Sutter says it is capable of vaccinating more than 25,000 patients per day across its system, which serves the greater Bay Area, parts of the Central Valley and the Sacramento region.

Some cancellations stem from stormy weather that caused widespread delays in vaccine shipments. But some of them are tied to a miscommunication with the state about the number of people in Sutter’s appointment system awaiting inoculation.

Sutter said some counties, such as Santa Clara County, have given the health care provider doses to dispense to residents there, but it’s not enough to make up the gulf between supply and appointments on the books.

The cancellations have left people like Ardath Grant frustrated and scrambling for scarce vaccine appointments elsewhere.

Grant, a former social worker who considers herself a tech-literate young senior, logged onto her online Sutter account recently and noticed her appointment to receive her second coronavirus shot on Friday had disappeared. When she called, Sutter said it was cancelled and advised her to keep checking back.

“It’s just that finding a vaccine, they are making it into a job. And because communication is so poor, it makes it worse,” Grant said.

Grant, who lives in Berkeley, was able to schedule her second shot through the city. But not everyone is so lucky. And while health officials say it’s not crucial to get the second shot at exactly the prescribed time, waiting makes some residents anxious.

“It’s just exhausting,” Grant said.

In late February, Leonard Migliore received an email from Sutter saying, “At this time, the vaccine supply we’re receiving from the state is extremely limited and unpredictable. The lack of vaccine has forced us to relocate, reschedule or indefinitely postpone some appointments and stop booking new ones for the time being. We know this is incredibly disappointing, and we share your frustration.”

Migliore, who received his first vaccine dose in Los Gatos and was expecting to receive his second on March 6, said he did not hear anything about his own appointment being scrapped but found it missing when he logged online to check.

“It was just gone,” he said.

Other residents, including one who had planned to drive from the Peninsula to Modesto, said they also received no notification. Sutter said it is in the process of notifying second dose patients scheduled through March 9 that their current appointments need to be cancelled and telling people they will call to reschedule.

Sutter is not the first health care system to have to cancel a large number of appointments. Last month, Kaiser acknowledged that it had cancelled more than 5,000 appointments because of supply shortages.

In the coming days, the state expects to receive more than a million doses of the newly approved Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, which only requires one dose and is easier to store than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. According to state data, California, which has about 40 million residents, has administered more than 9 million doses of vaccine, and state officials said recently they expect to be able to do 3 million vaccinations a week.