Pennsylvania counties are blaming ‘cumbersome’ state-provided software for vaccine registration problems
“PrepMod was a bit cumbersome,” she said. “We were kind of under a crunch to get our clinics up and running.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Health paid $852,000 for the software — and is now weighing whether to use it in soon-to-be-created mass vaccination clinics. But according to officials whose clinics serve Allegheny and four other counties, the program has serious flaws: It can’t create private appointment links, it overbooks clinics, it sends patients incorrect or conflicting scheduling reminders, and it lets people make appointments even if they aren’t eligible for the vaccine. . . .
PrepMod was created by Ms. Tate under a subsidiary of her organization, a software company for health providers called Multi-State Partnership for Prevention.
She has run vaccine clinics in communities of color for years, and last spring offered the software to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the New York Times [reported] earlier this month, but the Trump administration instead contracted with Deloitte. Ms. Tate, who according to the Times has sold PrepMod to 27 states and jurisdictions, has accused Deloitte and the CDC of stealing her intellectual property, claims the firm and the agency deny.
They have overlapping bugs. Whether that proves stealing of intellectual property is another question.
Working from home is popular with my software development colleagues. However, it impairs teamwork and makes it much more likely to miss bugs. That could be the problem here. Or it could be bad management. Or it could be hiring incompetents. Or, for a mess as big as this, it could be all of them.