Today there were supposed to be a slew of new vaccine dosages released to the mass vaccination sites, so I tried my luck along with everyone else in the world. I logged in and was told I had an estimated 8551 minute wait time. A little while later it was down in the 200s, then 80s, then 65, then 150, then eventually 19 minutes then CRASH.
Tried again, same random ups and downs (currently at 97 minutes). Then I got through! Momentary excitement followed by finding that most places it showed had 0 appointments (gee, thanks) with the occasional one saying there were appointments available but when I’d click through it would show that no time slots were available. Even ones that showed double-digits (I gave up on even trying for those showing less than 4) then showed no times available.
For this I wasted my morning.
Meredith: I couldn’t resist adding a still photo from Newton Nomadic Theater’s Covid-aware version of Waiting for Godot from this past September. That’s NNT founder Linda Goetz as Estragon – Jerry Reilly
I feel badly about Meredith’s experience and the experiences of others I know who have had difficulty getting even a reservation for a jab, let alone the actual vaccine. I want to give a shout out to the VA medical center in West Roxbury for the expeditious way they handled the two jabs I got there. I received a telephone message from the VA the third week in January that they would be contacting me to come in for my shots. I had a gut feeling they wouldn’t be back to me for quite sometime, but lo and behold, two days later the phone rang and a very kind operator verified it was me and asked for my service number and the last four of my social security number. My medical record popped up on her computer and she asked if I could come in on Saturday. Of course, I said yes and the entire operation was flawless. I had a 9:15 appointment and was home by 10:15. The only logistical problem involved the tendency of most vets including me to arrive early for any appointment. I arrived 40 minutes early as did most of the other vets who had appointments before or after me. Rather than fight it, the VA simply opened several small conference rooms so everyone could social distance while waiting.
I can’t say enough good things about the supplementary care I’ve received at the VA. As a retired Fed, I have a good retirement health plan, but applied at the VA more than 3 years ago when the last Administration threatened severe cuts to our benefits. I was assigned a five star primary care physician who had come from the Brigham and she spent well over an hour with me. She saw my Parkinson’s before even I did and I’ve been getting treatment for it at the VA for over three years. I’m convinced that one reason I’m still totally functional at 84 is because of the care and pretty intense physical training courses I suffer through with other vets. My retirement income is such that I have to pay some modest costs, but it’s all well worth it. A lot of bad things are published about the VA, but the vast majority of stuff they do is great and almost all the vets I run into there are grateful it is there for them.
While I understand a site being overloaded, there’s really no excuse for the bad design of MA’s site (as opposed to places like West Virginia, which used a Massachusetts company to create theirs).
For just one example – when you’re showing a list of places that have appointments, don’t show those with 0. When all appointments are gone system-wide, take people out of the waiting room with a message letting them know that there’s no availability.
I’m computer literate and am working from home with flexible hours. I lost a bunch of time this morning, but had the luxury of keeping an eye on my place in the waiting list and making up my work later. Manufacturing workers or grocery store workers or others in similar situations can’t do that, which means they were shut out from getting appointments. We need to do better.
There LOTS to not like about the “system” the state had put in place for getting the vaccine. There’s been lots of talk recently from the governor about some incremental improvements they are/will be added to the system. What’s the biggest mystery though surrounding this abysmal system is it’s most basic design choice.
The very obvious design is one similar to what Bob Burke described that the VA is using. The system knows the list of patients that need the vaccine. As vaccine doses becomes available, those doses get assigned to patients, the patients are contacted, and an appointment is assigned.
The state’s system for the general population could/should have worked the same way. Anyone wanting vaccination would go to the site once, answer the appropriate questions so they can be assigned to the appropriate “phase”, and the system would contact them when their turn came up and there was vaccine available at a nearby vaccination site. Your assignment might come in a day or it might be months depending on where you fit in the priority list. Once you registered though you wouldn’t have to think about it again until your number came up and you were contacted.
Instead, we’ve got Ticketmaster with a lobotomy. 100,000’s of people are told to go to the site. They sit at their computer for hours pressing refresh in hopes that this time a shot might be available at that nanosecond and they’ll be able to snag it. In addition to the colossal frustration and immense waste of everyone’s time, this design guarantees that the system will always be under gargantuan load from all of us monkeys endlessly pressing refresh for hours.
We’re in the middle of all this at my house at the moment. My wife is now eligible for a shot. For days now she’s been devoting a few hours, a few times a day, pushing that Refresh button and hoping to get lucky.
Nobody’s talking about replacing this system. It’s probably too late for that.
Nobody that I’ve heard has explained how we ended up with a system like this rather than a register once-assign later system. The only improvements that have been promised are little band-aids on this “monkeys press the Refresh” system.
In a state that’s known as a national leader in health care, a tech hub for computers and software, with a former health-care exec governor with a reputation for management expertise, the whole situation is just wildly inexplicable.
Nothing to do now though but push that Refresh button again, and again, and again.
CVS is working pretty well. My wife, not a computer “expert” got an appointment without too much trouble yesterday (appt for later in the week).
gov baker should take a nice long vacation!!!!!
@Rich Frank – Thanks for that; I now have an appointment at CVS for Saturday and a month later!
I thought posts on this blog have to be specific to Newton issues. This is something experienced by everyone in the state and beyond.
@Newtoner – you are indeed correct … but the pandemic has scrambled everyone’s brain and no one can remember what the rules are ;-). I have added a Newton specific photo to the post. We”ll fudge it with that.
@Newtoner – talking about the effect it’s having on people in Newton seemed on-topic enough to me.
And the experience we’re having with our website is not being experienced in all other states. For example, West Virginia has a really good website made by a Massachusetts company.
Our Republican governor and
All Democrat legislature are monumentally failing the most vulnerable citizens of the commonwealth.
Whose bright idea was it to send seniors to Gillette Stadium and Fenway Park(where there is no parking) in the middle of winter to get vaccinations?
Our neighboring states are kicking the crap out of us and they know it.
Connecticut is rolling out mobile vaccination sites, staffing phone banks to make appts, and providing transportation to people who cant make it to the site closest to them.
RI began allowing in-person family visits to assisted living facilities today,
and their restaurants are approved for 50 percent capacity.
The Massachusetts website is a
catastrophic s-show. My wife and I
have been manning 2 computers at a
time trying to get my 88 year old MIL
her first dose. I feel like a 17 year old
trying to get tickets to a Who show from Ticketron…
West Virginia and Florida are cleaning our clocks.
Other states are handling the this really well.
Massachusetts, home to the best and
brightest, is not!
Sad!!