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California’s effort to vaccinate people in residential care homes appears to have failed to reach many small facilities that are encountering problems making appointments for their residents.
The facilities, known as board and care homes, house a maximum of six residents each, but account for nearly 6,000 of the 7,400 residential care homes whose residents have been prioritized to receive the vaccine.
The facilities, tucked into residential neighborhoods throughout the state, can house nearly 35,000 older people. Los Angeles County alone has about 1,200 board and care homes, by far the most of any county in California.
The large number of board and care homes has complicated vaccine delivery, so too have the facilities’ informal structures that set them apart from larger assisted-living facilities. Board and care homes typically have no nurses on staff and no administrative office to handle paperwork and medical records. Rather, board-and-cares are usually family owned