Rohnert Park coronavirus clinic still plagued by scheduling problems

The beleaguered campaign to vaccinate Sonoma County seniors against the coronavirus plunged into deeper chaos Monday when the company managing the immunization effort at a Rohnert Park clinic began canceling thousands of appointments, while failing to fix a flaw on its website that incorrectly allowed people under the age of 75 to schedule 9,000 appointments for shots.

The scheduling website, developed by a state contractor hired to run this particular clinic for the county, continued to accept appointments Tuesday from people age 65 to 74 who are too young to qualify locally for the current round of vaccinations.

That’s although the site has been live for at least a week and county officials said Friday 85% of the vaccine appointments set had to be canceled because they were for people under 75 and ineligible in the county to get the shots.

OptumServe began canceling all appointments made by people under 75. In addition, it decided to cancel and rebook every appointment for a second dose — including appointments made by people 75 and older — because some did not schedule the required 21-day gap between shots. In addition, many people received contradictory text messages about the status of their appointments.

The problems have undercut the public’s faith in the county’s ability to manage an unprecedented campaign to vaccinate the population of nearly 500,000 against the coronavirus, while simultaneously slowing an effort to protect residents from an infectious disease that has killed at least 265 people since first detected here last March. And the delay in filling appointments at the Rohnert Park Community Center forced the county to delay vaccinating teachers in advance of a possible return to in-person instruction.

Asked Monday at a press briefing who is ultimately responsible among county officials for the miscommunication with OptumServe and rocky rollout of the Rohnert Park clinic, Lynda Hopkins, chair of the county Board of Supervisors, said “the buck always stops with us,” but emphasized the county’s difficult position.

Hopkins was referring to the county’s determination to focus now on inoculating seniors 75 and older because this group of 36,000 residents represents 60% of virus-related deaths, though California Gov. Gavin Newsom in mid-January opened vaccination eligibility to anyone in the state over age 65.

County officials hope to begin vaccinating residents age 65 to 74 sometime in late February.

Meanwhile, moving ahead to expand the vaccination effort, the county will be holding clinics at six different sites this week that also are exclusively for residents 75 and up.

Dozens of exasperated Press Democrat readers contacted the newspaper Monday seeking information about confusion around the Rohnert Park vaccinations.

Laurel Wroten, who is 66 and lives in Petaluma, is an example. She, her 83-year-old husband and 95-year-old father all were vaccinated at the OptumServe clinic Thursday, having booked appointments before the wording on the company’s website was changed to limit slots to those 75 and up. By Monday morning, they had learned their appointments for second doses had disappeared from the site.

To make matters more confusing, after logging on the site Wroten encountered a message that read, in part, “Appointments that are not viewable have not been canceled. Scheduling for both first and second dose appointments is currently unavailable. Please check back at a later time.”

She was baffled. In the early afternoon, Wroten logged on again and discovered that OptumServe had restored her appointment, at roughly the same time the company sent an email telling her the appointment had been canceled “due to vaccine supply.”

About 10 minutes after that, OptumServe confirmed that same appointment for Wroten.

Many people across the county reported similar experiences. They spent much of the day perplexed and in some cases panicked at the prospect of losing a chance at a vaccine dose against the highly contagious virus, especially a second dose that would boost their immunity to COVID-19 to about 95%.

By late Monday, many eligible seniors once again had appointments in place at the Rohnert Park clinic. County elected leaders and health officials insisted the OptumServe scheduling site would get sorted out, but didn’t say when.

“I just want to say that I’m sorry to the thousands of people who were confused and disappointed with the events of the last few days,” county Supervisor Chris Coursey said.

Coursey said second vaccine doses were rescheduled by OptumServe because a number of people, probably unwittingly, had scheduled their second appointment too close to their first. That would cut into the county’s ability to vaccinate as many people as possible.

“We want to assure everyone who had that first dose that no action is required on your part,” Coursey said. “The appointment for your second shot will be rescheduled with a new appointment in the coming days.”

Even those who wound up with secure inoculation appointments were left unhappy with Monday’s gyrations.

“This was supposed to be a joyful moment,” said Joanne Bentz of Graton, who got her first vaccine dose at the Rohnert Park clinic on Saturday, along with her husband. “We had no idea we weren’t eligible. We thought we had gotten lucky. When you sign up, you have to type in your birth date. It didn’t say anything. They gave us our shots and sent us home. The next morning, we wake up to this nightmare.”

Debbie Baldaramos of Santa Rosa couldn’t hold back her tears when she first talked to the Press Democrat. She and her husband, Steve, got their first shots but were unable to get any guidance from the county or OptumServe about whether they’d still receive their second doses. So Monday they drove to the Rohnert Park clinic site to find someone to ask directly. But no one was there. The clinic runs Tuesday through Saturday.

“There was not even a sign on the door,” she said. “I don’t know where to go.”

Their appointments for second shots eventually were reinstated.

To help residents after the appointment fiasco, county officials said Monday that OptumServe has activated a call center for those who need assistance with scheduling: 877-218-0381.

One of the most troubling aspects of Monday’s developments is that some Sonoma County residents aged 65 to 74 said they were still able to book appointments via the OptumServe website Monday, though the 75-and-over criterion for this county is stated online. OptumServe officials did not respond to a request Monday for comment.

Asked about that, county spokesman Paul Gullixson said vaccination clinic managers will be asking for identification, and anyone who is seeking a first dose without being eligible will be turned away. But the system leaves the door open for ineligible participants to take up appointment spaces that could go unfilled.

The county now is administering 2,000 to 3,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine a day on weekdays, much less on weekends. This week seniors 75 and older will have the opportunity to get shots at new clinics at: Rohnert Park Community Center; Grace Pavilion at Sonoma County fairgrounds in Santa Rosa; the Berger Center at Oakmont Village; Guerneville School; Analy High School; and Sonoma Valley High School. Go to SoCoEmergency.org for details on dates, times and eligibility.

Gullixson on Monday shed additional light on the origins of the confusion regarding the Rohnert Park clinic.

On Jan. 25, the county began contacting seniors over the age of 75 who had been identified by community partners such at Los Cien Sonoma County, Corazon Healdsburg and West County Health Centers. The county signed up many of those elders directly, but allowed some to self-register on OptumServe’s website if they were capable. In both cases, appointments were made using the OptumServe sign-up page online.

“We were only reaching out to those 75 and older,” Gullixson said. “We were going one by one, by invitation, so we had control over who we were giving the invitation to.”

At that point, Gullixson said, the website still had the “65 and over” language that the county was asking OptumServe to change to 75 and older for Sonoma County residents.

Gullixson said time was of the essence because county officials and OptumServe were trying to fill 150 vaccination appointments for last Wednesday, and 420 for Thursday.

The strategy backfired, though, when people began sharing the weblink to OptumServe’s vaccination sign-up site on social media. The appointment website crashed Wednesday and Thursday morning county officials figured out why: The sign-up site had been overwhelmed by local residents in the much larger 65 to 74 demographic.

Sonoma County has worked with OptumServe for months on COVID-19 testing, and so officials thought it was a natural extension to partner with the company on a public vaccination site. The county, along with three others in the state, was selected for a pilot inoculation site.

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.