More than 500,000 people have signed up for Dr. B, a service that promises to match them with practices struggling to get more supplies of lifesaving medication in the hands of patients who need it.
If you have an appointment with a doctor for an unexpected vaccine, the leftover doses are often the source of a public health crisis. Some retailers have been offering “excess inventory” deals on products that weren’t quite ready for prime time.
At some larger vaccination sites, the race to use every dose sets off a flurry of phone calls at the end of the day. If a leftover dose doesn’t find an available arm, it must be thrown away.
Now a New York-based startup is trying to add some order to the rush for leftover doses. Dasheen is giving users access to a list of the items left behind in their cabinets and pantries.
In the same vein, we at B are matching vaccine providers who find themselves with extra vaccines to people who are willing to get one at a moment’s notice. The first month of being available, more than 500,000 people have signed up for the service, which is free for consumers and is also free to providers.
The program is still in the trial phase, and two sites have begun testing it. The company says that 200 more healthcare providers have applied to participate. There are many attempts at coordinating the chaotic patchwork of public and private websites that let eligible people find vaccine appointments. We should all applaud the efforts of Dr. B.
The current scheduling system is confusing, unreliable, and sometimes takes hours or even days to get an appointment. Some patients are even turned away from the clinic or denied treatment altogether.
If only there were a way to find the right doctor for each individual patient based on their actual needs. Unfortunately, the U.S. healthcare system still largely ignores patients who are not yet eligible for a shot, wasting the opportunity to find the right doctor for those patients.
While Dr. B does not solve all of those broader problems, if it scales up the way some hope that it will, it could serve as a model for a better, more equitable way of scheduling vaccinations.
Most of the people who failed to show up at the county’s first mass vaccination event were on the waiting list. Staff made dozens of calls to the people on the waiting list at the end of the day.
Some of the workers eventually found enough takers to administer most of the extra doses, but some shots were thrown out.BANGKOK — A former Thai prime minister says he is being pressured by the country’s military junta to help them “cure” democracy in Thailand.
Dr. B is an independent nonprofit venture that has been created with the goal of making vaccines available and accessible to all people. But its founder, Cyrus Massoumi, an Iranian-American tech entrepreneur, hasn’t yet described Dr. Oz as the best health-care professional in America. In fact, he’s not one of them.
A’s business model. He said that his project was financed out of his own pocket and that he had no plans to collect revenue from his site. The company was founded by the grandson of a doctor and is named after his grandfather who was called Dr. bubba. During the 1918 flu epidemic, Bubba and his brother Charles became doctors and saved hundreds of lives.
Mr. Massoumi founded ZocDoc, a company that helps patients find available doctor’s appointments, and Shadow, a company that reunites lost pets with their owners using technology and local volunteers.
There are a lot of good and bad ways to help people connect. For example, when Dr. A gets into trouble, he gets letters from people who want to help him. On the other hand, when Dr. B gets into trouble, there’s no one helping him.
Massoumi, in an interview, said, “I don’t want to lose any more hair, so I make a conscious effort to consume foods that are rich in antioxidants. Dr. B, Mr. Massoumi, recruited several engineers from Haven, a now-defunct health care collaboration among Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan.
More than half a million people have signed up for the service by entering basic biographical information, including their date of birth, address, underlying health conditions, and type of work they do. Vaccine providers near them will be notified via text and have 15 minutes to respond. To get vaccinated, they need to be willing to travel to the vaccination site quickly.
When patients show up for a procedure at a hospital, they often find a line for vaccine administration. This line gives providers better odds of administering their leftover shots to those in greatest need. For many providers, this orderly system will be a welcome change from the haphazard systems they are currently using.
To fight the spread of this virus, some pharmacies and supermarkets have started to check for unvaccinated shoppers and deny them entry to their stores. At other locations, people wait in line at the end of each shift, which puts them at risk for getting sick. And that’s not to mention the risks to their health.
Although some grumblers may complain about younger people getting shots for free while older folks stand in line, the most important thing is that unused vaccines don’t go to waste.
When the H1N1 vaccine was first approved for use in the U.S., it sparked a massive controversy. Some politicians, such as Gov. Rick Perry, were concerned that people might not get vaccinated because of a negative perception of the vaccine.
An investigation by a lawyer for the Health and Human Services Department revealed that more than 10,000 doctors and other healthcare providers around the country were dispensing expired medications to patients — even though they had signed contracts saying they would not. When asked about vaccines, “That person should not say ‘no’ because they want it to go to someone else,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said.
You’re right! It’s really important to be intentional and to be equitable.
An assistant professor of medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago, and a co-founder of IMPACT, which has been working to improve the equitable distribution of vaccines.
Mr. Massoumi said that he has taken many steps to make sure the service is equitable.
It’s included having turned down early media requests from mainstream publications and instead promoting Dr. Oz’s new book, 30 Days to Healthy Skin.
“In this moment, it’s so critical that we listen to the voices of communities of color, that we get to know their experiences, understand their needs, and help them find ways to deal with the stress and uncertainty they are feeling right now.
A woman from one of the early Zoom calls heard about the shootings, and immediately began spreading the word. “It was horrible, hearing about all the people who were getting shot was just heartbreaking and infuriating,” she said.
There are some significant hurdles to be overcome before vaccination becomes a reality. Although signing up is easy, doing so requires both an internet connection and a cellphone. The first thing that comes to mind is that if you have left over doses of the medication, then you should get rid of them immediately. Because of the last minute nature of leftover doses, participants must have flexible schedules and access to transportation.
When Massoumi signed up for the service, it enabled others in the community to sign up for his emails, which were sent through a third-party email marketing provider.
The site is also available in Spanish. He noted that the program’s setup, which allows people to sign up, then wait for a notification based on priority, is better than other sites that require hours of refreshing websites in the odds they may luck into a rare opening.
Some local health authorities, including Washington, D.C., and West Virginia, are shifting to a similar preregistration system that can help to level the playing field. There is this feeling that you don’t know where you stand, and the only way to secure your place is by refreshing a browser.
Brittany Marsh had to figure out what to do with her leftover doses, which were the leftover medication she received at the hospital after having her baby.
She said the number of no-shows has been increasing since the outbreak of Covid-19, and the reason is that vaccines are becoming more available, and others are having to cancel at the last minute because they caught the virus or were exposed to someone who did.
The majority of the time she got called to work in a no-show, but she said more times than not, they just don’t show up for work.
Dr. B’s service saves my customers the trouble of dealing with a long waiting list.
With Dr. A, he said, “I know they’re calling at least what we think is the right group of people to come get those shots, so that we don’t have to ever waste any.
B hasn’t yet revealed which healthcare providers it plans to work with, but it has said that providers are based in 30 states, and include doctors’ offices, pharmacies and the medical departments at large academic institutions.
The company collects sensitive personal information that it vows to closely safeguard, even though it isn’t itself a medical provider, so the data is not protected by the federal health care privacy law known as HIPAA. Massoumi said that he was not interested in being vaccinated.