Next registration opportunity is Friday, Feb. 5, at 5 p.m.
||| FROM BRENDAN COWAN for DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT |||
Please visit the San Juan County COVID Vaccine Page for critical details. Continue reading below for more in-depth information.
As San Juan County Health & Community Services continues to provide vaccine to the islands (many other local providers are also now delivering vaccine!) the registration process has been frustrating for many. While those who can secure an appointment have had a smooth experience, those who have not are left wishing there was a better way. The good news is that the County is switching to a new system. That said, some existing challenges will remain. Overall, it is an improvement. Here are the details:
- The new registration tool is called PrepMod and is managed by WA Department of Health. The tool is being used by jurisdictions across the country including Los Angeles County, the states of Massachusetts, Alaska, and many more. DOH has recently given approval for it to be used by San Juan County.
- As before, reservations will be released at a set time (next release time will be Friday, Feb. 5 at 5 p.m.). The registration link is HERE, and the link is also included in Step 2 on the COVID Vaccine Page. Please note, it will not be possible to find or book appointments in San Juan County until the set time that reservations open.
- At this time, it is not known how many doses of vaccine will arrive for next week’s vaccine events. That number will be posted to the COVID Vaccine Page once available – most likely the morning of Feb. 5.
- A video with clear instructions on registering is available HERE. It is highly recommended that you view the video before registering.
KEY THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND:
- Only those who are currently eligible to receive vaccine may register. Please use the Phase Finder tool if you are not sure of your eligibility. Note that using this tool does not book your registration nor add you to a waitlist.
- The initial appointment search screen will list vaccine events statewide. Once San Juan County reservations are open (Friday, Feb. 5 at 5 p.m.), enter your zip code and a radius of 15 miles and you will see all current vaccine events in San Juan County.
- Each vaccine event will display the number of available appointments. If that number is zero, you will not be able to register.
- If slots are available, you will be asked to enter detailed information (again, please view the instructional video). If multiple people are in the system at the same time, those slots may fill before the registration process is complete. This is certainly not ideal, but we have been informed that Department of Health is working with PrepMod to try to address this challenge.
- If you do secure an appointment, you will see this notification, and then receive a confirmation email (be sure to check your spam folder!)
OVERALL SUMMARY OF THE PREPMOD SYSTEM:
IMPROVEMENTS
-
- Improved user interface.
- Eliminates possibility of double bookings.
- Better (but not perfect) indication of when all slots are full.
- Drastically improved experience when receiving vaccine- no longer any need for paper forms.
- Automated system improves time to deliver a dose, leading to quicker vaccine delivery (once supplies are available).
CHALLENGES
- Many will find that no appointments are left by the time they complete the registration process. Hopefully DOH will find a fix for this.
- There is no waitlist capability.
NOTE: We recognize that these are significant challenges. Hopefully the PrepMod tool continues to improve, and things will become less frustrating as supply increases.
For now, demand far exceeds supply. Please take a look at this Q&A video for a more detailed look at the San Juan County vaccine delivery process. Thank you, islanders, for your ongoing patience and diligence during this difficult time.
Maybe I am really dense, but when I type in 98245 at the site indicated it shows me clinics in Benton County. And when I tried the location search (Eastsound, San Juan County, Friday Harbor), I get the answer that there are “no clinics to show”. Weird. I tried this on Chrome and on Firefox. HELP
And I tried it on my iPad … same result. Come on, programmers, you’ve gotta try harder.
My apologies for not cross-reference this more recent article: https://theorcasonian.com/vaccine-appointment-registration-delayed-until-9-a-m-monday-feb-8/
The Prep Mod system is an incredibly complex system, far more complex than the one many of us tried to use on January 29. And when you get to the end of it, IF you get there, the selected appointment slot could easily have disappeared. This is a programming error that should be corrected. Once you get in and select an available appointment slot, that slot should be reserved for a reasonable amount of time (say five minutes) until you have had a chance to fill out the detailed form.
I can imagine that hundreds, if not thousands, of hours will be wasted statewide by frustrated — and increasingly angry — citizens unless this stupid error is corrected. We are all getting very tired of the official appeals to “please be patient.”
We have already been patient, and our patience is wearing thin.
It appears to me that there is little or no coordination between the clinics and the county. The new county system registration system, announced on Feb 4, while offering some advantages over the previous system, still suffers the same problem of requiring residents to compete with each other on who can fill out the damned forms (now more complex) the quickest. This contributes to the same frustration that we had before, namely needing to fill out the same forms potentially over and over again in pursuit of an unknown number of doses obtained by the county. There appears to me to be no capability to save the information input in the forms. That is a massive oversight that only adds to the frustration of people who are desperate for some assurance that is not just appeals to be patient. Is the county assuming that us oldsters have nothing better to do than this? After all, we have been mostly patiently sequestering ourselves for a year now! Meanwhile, the clinics are providing wait lists for their clients with assurances that they will call them when a reservation becomes available. The result is even more confusing. Who do we trust? Our health care providers or the county which seems to have more excuses than real solutions.
This is a mess! Why can the county not tell us how many doses they are getting? What is the big secret? Why can they not tell us why the current registration date is delayed other than a vague excuse that it is not SJC’s fault? Who is covering whose rear end?
Recent articles from King5:
https://www.king5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/vaccine/washington-state-covid-19-vaccine-access/281-a43d6b2d-acdd-4397-9aca-342beb386fb9
The state now will distribute COVID-19 vaccine doses as follows:
* 35% are going to mass vaccination sites
* 23% are going to hospitals
* 19% are going to community health centers
* 19% are going to pharmacies
* 3% are going to tribes and Urban Indian Programs
https://www.king5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/vaccine/washington-state-covid-19-vaccine-supply-shortages/281-bea6548b-c654-4fb8-817d-260b731541a4
“The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) said Wednesday that, this week, more than 600 facilities requested more than 358,000 first doses of the vaccine. However, the state’s first dose allocation for the week from the federal government was only 107,000 doses — meeting less than 33% of the demand.”
“Decisions are made based on several factors: proportional population of those eligible in the county, data from providers, provider’s current inventory and documented throughput, equity, and access at all provider types,” said the statement from the DOH.
When we don’t get accurate information from our Government, we wind up playing “back of the envelope” calculations. Given the above information,
one admittedly speculative guess is that San Juan County might get:
107,000 doses x ( San Juan Population = 16,000 ) / (WA State Population =7,000,000) = 244 doses. Then this gets “adjusted” by the proportions and factors above. But, transparency about how WA DOH actually does this appears hard to come by.
So, as I understand it:
–You cannot fill out the form to pre-register until there is an appointment available
–By the time you fill out the form, which everyone else is filling out at the same time, the appointment may no longer be available
–If no appointment is available, the form is not saved, i.e., there is no “pre-registration”; and you have to repeat the process once there is another “available” appointment
–The form asks for your contact information (phone, email), but does not save it to contact you unless you already have an appointment.
So there is no list of eligible, pre-qualified people waiting to get appointments (and therefore no record of how many people are waiting to be served).
This is Kafkaesque in its absurdity.