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The creators of Orange County’s COVID-19 vaccination app are being audited by county auditors, facing numerous questions around whether they delivered on all the promises of the Othena app they were paid millions for.
It’s one of several high profile county contracts getting audited after former county Supervisor Andrew Do pleaded guilty to bribery, admitting he helped orchestrate over $10 million worth of contracts in exchange for payoffs.
[Read: Former OC Supervisor Andrew Do Pleads Guilty to Bribery Scheme]
The Othena app faced numerous questions after it was approved and launched without public discussion, with the contract ballooning from around $1.2 million to as much as $5 million despite repeated glitches and one county supervisor publicly saying the app “sucked.”
“My concern remains that the Othena contract was not a competitively bid contract,” said Supervisor Katrina Foley in a Nov. 20 phone call. “We didn’t get half the stuff they say in the contract was going to be provided to the county.”
A Voice of OC investigation found the parent company of the app hired Jonathan Bredehoft, the husband of then-county chief of public health services Margaret Bredehoft, as a consultant.
Neither the company or the Bredehofts appear to have disclosed the connection to county leaders.
“To our knowledge, the County was unaware of any alleged familial connections that Dr. Margaret Bredehoft may have had with Curapatient,” said county spokeswoman Molly Nichelson.
Margaret Bredehoft’s 2021 conflict of interest form, the only one released by county officials when asked for all her disclosures, shows no mention of her husband’s work.
Jonathan Bredehoft declined to comment for this article, and his wife Margaret did not return requests for comment.
Keaton Gallaher, a spokesperson for CuraPatient, the company behind the app, denied any failure by the company to keep up with the contract in a statement to Voice of OC, and denied any conflict of interest around Jonathan Bredehoft’s work for the company.
“CuraPatient is confident in the work we provided during the pandemic, and we understand the importance of transparency,” Gallaher said. “(Jonathan’s) contributions to CuraPatient focused on unrelated initiatives, specifically building a risk management framework around our chronic disease efforts.”
How Was Othena Created?
The Othena app was developed by an Irvine based software company called Composite Apps, a subsidiary of CuraPatient that shares an office with them according to state records.
The $1.2 million contract was awarded to Composite Apps in Nov. 2020 without any public debate, public records show, part of over $200 million in contracts approved by supervisors without telling the public.
The only other work Composite Apps did for the county before receiving the Othena contract was a $50,000 contract with the county Health Care Agency to build software to track the agency’s petty cash in March 2020 according to county records.
But the app faced frequent crashes and glitches when it did launch, with county residents reporting to county supervisors they had difficulty getting an appointment for a vaccination and in some cases showing up to vaccination sites with an appointment only to be turned away.
“There does seem however to be something on which we can all agree. Othena sucks,” said Supervisor Don Wagner at the board’s Jan. 26, 2021 meeting. “You know it’s a mess, the CEO knows it’s a mess, the board knows it’s a mess. More importantly, everyone out there knows.”
Despite those glitches, supervisors decided to expand their contract in April 2021 to as much as $5 million in exchange for adding new requested features to the app, though it’s unclear how many of those were implemented.
[Read: OC’s Glitchy Vaccine App ‘Othena’ Quietly Gets Nearly $3 Million Increase]
At the county board of supervisors’ meeting on Nov. 19, Foley and Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento directly called for the Othena contract to be included in the contracts reviewed by auditors.
Developer Hires Senior County Staffer’s Husband As Consultant
Margaret Bredehoft joined the county in August 2020 as deputy director for Public Health Services within the Health Care Agency, coming over from her role directing business operations at Providence St. Joseph Health.
Her tenure at the county lasted two and a half years, with her abrupt resignation coming in Feb. 2023 as she said she wanted to spend more time with her family.
[Read: OC’s Top Public Health Official is Resigning; No Permanent Replacement Yet]
She also faced a series of questions over her treatment of county employees, with a county human resources investigation launched into her behavior in 2021, but none of the results were ever released publicly.
In 2021 she faced a county human resources investigation over allegations concerning her treatment of county employees that the county publicly confirmed existed, but no results of the investigation were ever publicly released.
At the time, multiple staffers at the agency also reached out to Voice of OC to raise concerns that Bredehoft and then-HCA director Clayton Chau were forcing out qualified employees and replacing them with those they viewed as loyal.
[Read: Santana: Why Did A Second Wave of Top Execs Bolt Orange County’s Public Health Care Agency?]
While Bredehoft was working for the county, her husband was working for CuraPatient through the consulting company he helped found, Vitalae Corporate Services – according to CuraPatient and her husband’s LinkedIn page.
Gallaher declined to comment on when Jonathan Bredehoft was hired or what he worked on, but confirmed he had worked for the company on unrelated projects.
County leaders say they were unaware, and Dr. Clayton Chau, who was the head of the county healthcare agency responsible for overseeing the contract at the time, also confirmed he was unaware of that connection in a text responding to questions from Voice of OC.
App Developer Faces Series of Workplace Harassment Claims
While Curapatient and Composite Apps were developing and managing Othena, they were also hit with a slate of workplace harassment claims that executives in both companies were regularly abusing staff according to court records reviewed by Voice of OC.
Gallaher did not respond to requests for comment on the claims and litigation against CuraPatient and Composite Apps.
After reviewing complaints filed with the California Department of Civil Rights, state regulators approved seven different lawsuits from former employees of CuraPatient and Composite Apps.
Voice of OC located four lawsuits that were filed against the companies in Orange County Superior Court by former employees, alleging employees were forced to work unpaid overtime and that when they complained they were fired.
Two of the lawsuits were settled, and two remain ongoing.
Matthew Decker, one of the employees who filed a complaint against both CuraPatient and Composite Apps, claimed in his suit that executives at the companies verbally abused employees and treated him inappropriately because he is bisexual.
“Male employees would regularly be subject to very public lectures, berating, yelling, and personal attacks by upper management whereas female employees were rarely, if ever, subject to such ridicule or public humiliation,” Decker claimed in his suit.
“Complaints from Plaintiff and his fellow male colleagues related to a hostile work environment, unwanted sexual advances, and sexually explicit and inappropriate language by management, including mocking of him and his LGBT colleagues (fellatio gestures) were ignored and never investigated,” he continued. “However, female HR complaints were investigated.”
Decker’s case is still open, and is set to go to trial in October according to court records. Both companies denied all of his allegations.
Richard Hollien, another former employee who sued Composite Apps and CuraPatient, said he was also sexually harassed by his superior and asked out repeatedly despite being a gay man.
“She would initiate physical contact during work events, she sat on his lap at a work event, she would call him after hours, and she followed him at work or would insert herself into his working situation despite her not purportedly being on his team or within his department,” Hollien claimed in his suit.
Hollien later settled his lawsuit with the company for an undisclosed amount after the companies denied all his claims.
David Hook, another former employee of CuraPatient, claimed in his suit that he worked directly on Orange County contracts and faced regular verbal abuse from a top executive, which he reported to the company’s board of directors.
The next day, Hook claims he was suspended, and that while there were discussions of disciplining the executive nothing concrete ever came out.
Hook’s case was also settled for an undisclosed amount before trial after CuraPatient denied his claims.
Matthew Ward, a former employee who sued both Composite Apps and CuraPatient, claimed he was owed missing overtime wages and that he was harassed by his superiors and ultimately fired for complaining about his missing wages.
Ward’s case is still ongoing, with a jury trial scheduled for March, and the companies have denied his claims in court filings.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
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