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CHA Continues Advocacy on Statewide Vaccine Network; Blue Shield Announces Revisions to Contract

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CHA continues to work with the state’s Government Operations Agency and its third-party administrator (TPA), Blue Shield of California, on the new statewide vaccination network.  

Currently, Blue Shield is determining which providers will be in its network, and is doing so in three stages: 

  1. It has brought Kaiser Permanente on board. 

  2. It is building out the rest of the initial network, primarily consisting of large health systems, and hospitals in areas where those systems do not have geographic reach. 
  3. It is engaging counties about providers in their jurisdictions to further add to the network (these counties are grouped by waves in a slide deck from the state, which CHA previously shared via Coronavirus Response on Feb. 18).  

CHA has engaged both the agency and Blue Shield to secure improvements to the transition to the My Turn application and its interfaces with electronic health record (EHR) systems — as well as to provider contract requirements, including those related to sharing of data and notice of vaccine reallocation. 

As a result of feedback from the hospital field, Blue Shield announced three key improvements to the provider contract:  

  • EHR: Blue Shield’s chief information officer has stated they are committed to using the EHR functionality that Kaiser Permanente is using to interface with My Turn, the software application used to schedule vaccine appointments. Work between Blue Shield, Accenture (the state’s contractor for My Turn), and Epic has made the most progress, and work is now beginning with Cerner. The final main EHR vendor for California hospitals and health systems to be engaged is Meditech.  

  • Medical records: Removed that the TPA would have access to providers’ medical records if requested within three years.  

  • Vaccine reallocation: Extended the time that Blue Shield will endeavor to provide notice of any vaccine reallocation from 48 hours to 72 hours. 

    In the coming days and weeks, Blue Shield will continue to engage with prospective providers for the state’s new vaccine delivery network. Key updates will be provided by Marta Green, the state’s lead on the new vaccine delivery network, and Aliza Arjoyan, senior vice president of network management provider partnerships at Blue Shield of California, during the California Department of Public Health’s weekly COVID-19 Vaccination Office Hours call for providers tomorrow, Feb. 26, from 9 to 10 a.m. (PT). To participate, visit this link.