How Not to Schedule Vaccinations, CDC Style

In an earlier post, and a more recent update, I described all the problems with Arizona's terrible, roll-your-own vaccination scheduling system. In the first post, I wondered how the Trump administration could have forgone an opportunity to develop a reservation system that all the states could use, as opposed to having them each develop their own bespoke systems.

I recently learned that they did, or at least they tried. According to NYT, the CDC awarded a no-bid contract to Deloitte to develop a vaccine administration management system (VAMS) for everybody.

Upon hearing this news, Corona-zona Senior Research Engineer Bryan said, "They hired Deloitte? But they're an accounting firm. What do they know about developing web sites?" Good question, Senior Research Engineer Bryan, good question. One can only wonder what kind of corruption might have led to awarding a $44M no-bid contract to an unqualified company.

Deloitte is proud of their work on VAMS. Nonetheless, only nine states have adopted it, and many of them are not happy with the product. A healthcare system in Virginia stopped using the system after a week because of slow response and crashing. The NYT article offers more quotes from officials saying how crappy it is and details other VAMS malfunctions, such as its inability to connect to an information sharing network used by the states.

Another interesting facet (and main storyline) of that article is that a woman from a pro-vaccination nonprofit in Maryland had offered her system to the CDC for one-third of the cost of the one Deloitte produced. It says she previewed her system for the CDC with Deloitte personnel present as "consultants." She now claims features of her system (now being used by 27 states) appeared in VAMS. They don't call 'em beltway bandits for nothing!

Image by jarmoluk on pixabay

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