Santa Clara County plans to hit large hospitals and medical groups with $5,000 fines if they don’t provide their members with coronavirus tests or help them find other places that do the testing.
Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody revised her June 10 lockdown order to legally require large health care companies and nonprofits such as Kaiser Permanente and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation to provide coronavirus testing to more categories of patients and take less time to report results of those tests.
The revised testing order also requires providers to inform patients how to access coronavirus testing and to remove impediments to testing, according to Cody.
“Embers start fires,” Cody said, “and people with Covid, especially those who don’t know that they have it, start Covid outbreaks. So testing is really foundational to our ability to prevent Covid.”
According to county data, Kaiser Permanente averaged 4,261 tests during the most recent reporting week from Aug. 31 to Sept. 6. PAMF averaged 1,426 tests during that seven-day span, but no other health care provider averaged more than 700, according to the county.
By contrast, the county-run Santa Clara Valley Medical Center reported 13,072 tests during the week of Aug. 31 to Sept. 6.
The revised order will require health care providers to return coronavirus test results in no more than three days from when a patient’s test sample is taken.
The order also requires providers to provide coronavirus testing to all symptomatic people, all people who have been exposed to a confirmed case of the virus, all people referred by the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, and all people classified as essential workers by the California Department of Managed Health Care.
The county isn’t providing any funding to the health care providers in order to meet this mandate.
In announcing the revised order, Cody and Santa Clara County Supervisors Cindy Chavez and Joe Simitian touted the support of 10 mayors across the county, including San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo.
“The only way we’re really going to be able to beat this virus is by having all of our health care providers pushing with us,” Liccardo said.
County officials pointed to the state’s new emphasis on testing when determining whether to allow counties to reopen certain business sectors as well as in-person classes for schools.
Counties must meet thresholds for new cases per 100,000 residents and test positivity rate to move through the state’s four-tiered economic reopening system.
“The only way we’re going to keep ourselves safe, get back to work, let a grandparent hug their grandkids safely, is by getting the testing done,” Simitian said. “And that means now — not later, not weeks or months
from now, but today.”
The revised order takes effect Sept. 25, according to the county. — Staff and wire reports
We’re six months into the pandemic and they’re only dealing with this problem now! I was one of the people Stanford turned away when I asked for a test in April, when levels of Covid were high. Now that the numbers are dropping, the county comes along with this. What’s the point, Joe and Sara? Where were you when we needed you?
The numbers must be falling, so they need to keep the hysteria going through election day. This is pure evil. Never have we mass tested people with no symptoms and infection death rate of like .02% or less, if we’re counting honestly. This is not about public health, it’s politics plain and simple.
You couldn’t pay me enough to be tested. I won’t add myself to their “case” count.
This is yet another layer of services the County is requiring businesses to provide without pay. In case you’ve forgotten, hospitals are businesses too. If the County wants something, they should be prepared to pay for it. To do otherwise is like being the a diner who eats and then walks out without paying. Or does the County identify more with another type of entity that don’t have to pay because they have punative weapons at their diposal?
The County should at least reimburse businesses up front for services requested and if the service providers aren’t reimbursed right away they should ‘just say no’ to being robbed by the county.
Those tests are notoriously unreliable. They come up positive for any flu virus. Total political manipulation, and a scam at worst. Then if you come up positive, which you cannot even trust, they intend to track you! Just more infringements on our freedoms. I would run away from testing.
Those tests are notoriously unreliable. Then they track and trace you. No thanks