L.A. is on life support...illegals are literally going to cause the death of many citizens who will not be able to get into an ER when they need one.

L.A. County may close most of its clinics

Facing a deficit, health officials want to pay private centers to take up the slack. Critics say the plan's logic is faulty.

By Jack Leonard and Francisco Vara-Orta, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
February 14, 2008

Los Angeles County healthcare officials unveiled a draft cost-cutting plan Wednesday that calls for closing all but one of the county's dozen clinics and reduces services at its six comprehensive outpatient health centers.

Officials said a $195-million deficit makes the cuts necessary even under a "best-case scenario" for the badly strapped public healthcare system. The county faces the threat of more reductions in state and federal aid in the next few months. Health department officials have privately floated the possibility of deeper cuts if the projected deficit grows.

The current proposal, if approved by the Board of Supervisors, would dramatically retreat from the county's longtime role in providing primary care to the indigent. The clinics and comprehensive centers get about 400,000 primary care visits a year, nearly two-thirds from uninsured patients.

Officials said they plan for private, nonprofit clinics to step into the gap and provide care to most of the displaced patients for a lower cost than the public system. The county currently has contracts with private clinics, and those would be expanded.

But several healthcare advocates questioned the proposal."On paper, it looks like they're trying to achieve savings without cuts in services, but the numbers leave more questions unanswered," said Yolanda Vera, director of LA Health Action, which advocates for improved community healthcare for the poor.

Lark Galloway-Gilliam, executive director of the advocacy group Community Health Councils, said the county had failed to make good on promises to expand specialty healthcare in South L.A. after closing Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital last year. The area, she said, already lacks enough private clinics.

"In South L.A., there is a heavy reliance on county clinics," she said. "It's very scary."

County officials said the plan would allow them to focus on protecting the most crucial parts of the region's safety net: trauma, hospital and specialty care services. The state and federal governments reimburse the county for much of that care.

"What we're trying to do is keep the safety net intact," said John F. Schunhoff, chief deputy director of the county Department of Health Services. "If we're successful . . . we're going to be preserving patient care. We're just shifting who's providing it."

But closing the clinics could shift many patients into the already overburdened hospitals.
Norma Parada, 23, a legal immigrant from Mexico who is uninsured, was one such patient. On Wednesday she was paying her first visit to the Glendale Health Clinic to see a doctor about getting medication for her kidneys. Parada, who had a kidney transplant in 2001, had previously gone to Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar for medical care.

Parada said she takes 15 pills a day for her kidneys and that her medication costs about $5,000 a month, paid by the county.

Frustrated by the constant lines and long waits at Olive View, Parada asked where she could go that was closer to her North Hollywood residence and was referred to the Glendale clinic. "If they close," said Parada, a part-time delivery driver for Papa John's Pizza, "I know I'll just be back in that line at Olive View."

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, voicing opposition to clinic closures, said the county has spent more than a decade emphasizing preventive care by operating facilities where patients can go for checkups and treatment for minor illnesses.

He said spending on prevention has saved the county in acute care treatment costs, and he called on the department to cut administrative costs before reducing services.

"It's outrageous," he said. "Here I am trying to expand ambulatory care to the underserved communities that I represent. And to be shrinking it at a time when we need to be expanding is a fool's errand."

In 2002, the last time the county faced major budgets woes, it closed 11 health clinics.

Cutting primary care services would save the county about $73 million. Under the plan, the county would then spend an additional $10 million on specialty care services and pay private clinics $25 million to handle most of the patients currently using public clinics.

The private clinics would be paid enough to treat all of the patients who lack insurance of any kind. But many patients who do have limited insurance, including Medi-Cal, would have to find other places to go.
The county would also use savings from previous years along with other funds to bridge the nearly $200-million gap projected for the next fiscal year.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 9521.story