Health insurance giant Blue Shield of California will be the outside administrator tasked with ramping up coronavirus vaccinations, which to date has been slow, stilted and plagued by confusion, the state health agency said in a statement Wednesday.
Another major health care provider, Kaiser Permanente, will also help in the effort to deliver vaccines speedily and equitably across the state of nearly 40 million residents, the agency said. Both are nonprofit companies based in Oakland.
The contract with Blue Shield is still being finalized but its task is to “create, contract with and manage a statewide vaccine administration network" and to allocate doses directly to providers, which will include pharmacies, public and private health networks and hospitals, pop-up sites and community health centers with an eye toward equity, according to the statement.
Blue Shield has an extensive network of providers, contracting with tens of thousands of physicians and hundreds of hospitals throughout the state. Kaiser has its own health insurance plans as well as medical offices.
Darrel Ng, spokesman for the California Department of Public Health, declined to give more details or comment on Blue Shield, but said part of an insurer's general responsibility is to reward providers that do a better job.
—Janie Har, Associated Press