Clinics

Times are tough enough for Californians; they're even tougher for Californians' teeth. "One-quarter of all adults and 28% of children in California have untreated dental caries [cavities]," says Len Finocchio, a senior program officer at the California Healthcare Foundation, a health advocacy group. "Our research tells us that many people in California have been avoiding routine care that might have cost about $100 for a checkup and cleaning, and then find themselves in the emergency room, where they get only an antibiotic, a bill that can average over $600 and instructions to see a dentist."

At any one time, hundreds of clinical trials are underway in the U.S. to test simpler and more effective ways to treat and prevent HIV infection, which afflicts more than 1 million people in this country. Most of those in the U.S. with HIV - and with AIDs in its full-blown stage - are men. So, understandably, men make up the majority of the participants in the trials. However, women, who account for 25% of those living with HIV in the U.S., are significantly underrepresented in clinical trials, according to infectious disease researchers and health professionals who have studied this issue.

Hidden from view in a bucolic grove about 20 miles from Baton Rouge, La., the only operating leper colony in the continental United States has been Jose Azaharez's home for a quarter of a century. "This is all I have in the whole world," said Azaharez, a former welterweight boxer from Cuba who was diagnosed with the disease in the 1950s and is now marginally disfigured. "If I had to leave here, where would I go? Who would I stay with? This is the only home I know."

Just before 10:45 a.m., Keith Marks called 911 and the Los Angeles County emergency response system sprang into action. A fire engine, a paramedic squad and a private ambulance - eight men in total - rushed to the Martin Luther King Jr. urgent-care center in Willowbrook. When they arrived, Marks, 56, was sitting calmly in a wheelchair just outside the entrance. His complaint: he was having joint pain from gout and wanted his medication refilled. "I can't walk," he said.

Flies buzz around the head of the emaciated woman as she lies on a dirty chaise longue in the courtyard of a drab two-story brick building that looks like a cheap motel. People walk in and out of the building, some holding intravenous bottles above their heads like shuffling Statues of Liberty as medications drip into their veins. Strips of metal screening have been tacked across doorways in a makeshift effort to keep flies out.

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday approved $44.8 million in extra funding for dozens of private clinics that treat the growing ranks of uninsured patients. The county has been reimbursing clinics for primary care, dental and specialty medical services for the last 13 years, and currently budgets $54 million annually for payments to clinics. The new funding, which will be paid over the next three years, includes $35.5 million in services for new patients, $7.8 million for equipment and construction, and $1.5 million to create a countywide Internet-based medical records system.

It's a Friday afternoon and the movie "Moneyball" is playing in a medical clinic waiting room at 9001 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. No one is there to watch it, just rows of vacant chairs. Perhaps it's just an off day, but on two other recent visits, no more than a handful of people could be found in the waiting room. It was a much different scene two years ago, when a visitor to the Beverly Hills clinic found the waiting room packed, every seat filled and patients spilling out into an overflow area.

It's a question faced by countless travelers headed overseas: What's the best source for travel immunizations? Private physicians are one option. Private clinics specializing in travel medicine are another. But both can be expensive. For travelers flexible enough to make an appointment during somewhat limited business hours, a visit to one of the handful of county and city health clinics that offer immunizations could be the answer.

Amid the economic downturn and slow growth for retail and outpatient medical care services, pharmacy giants Walgreen Co. and CVS Caremark Corp. are rolling out new specialized services at their in-store clinics, going beyond treatment of routine maladies.

The beaming smile on Brad--116 days sober and HIV-positive--is testament to his appreciation for SPECTRUM, a mental health clinic for people who have the AIDS virus. The clinic, whose initials stand for Services for HIV Prevention, Education, Care, Treatment and Research for Underserved Minorities, has been operating for nearly a year at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science near Watts. But it was only on Wednesday that it held a festive formal opening.

It's a Friday afternoon and the movie "Moneyball" is playing in a medical clinic waiting room at 9001 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. No one is there to watch it, just rows of vacant chairs. Perhaps it's just an off day, but on two other recent visits, no more than a handful of people could be found in the waiting room. It was a much different scene two years ago, when a visitor to the Beverly Hills clinic found the waiting room packed, every seat filled and patients spilling out into an overflow area.

A restaurant workers' group and a Los Angeles community clinic have launched a unique cooperative to provide health coverage to a group of people excluded from federal healthcare reform — illegal immigrants. The pilot program, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, offers preventive and primary care to low-wage, uninsured workers in the restaurant industry. Legal immigrants and other restaurant workers who don't meet the criteria or cannot afford coverage under the healthcare law are also eligible.

ATLANTA — Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed a bill Monday imposing new restrictions on the state's sole abortion clinic that could force it to close its doors. The law is one of several recent state measures championed by antiabortion activists and passed largely by Republican allies. Last week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law that banned most abortions after 20 weeks. In March, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell signed a bill requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion.

The sole abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi could be forced to close under a bill headed to the desk of Gov. Phil Bryant, who has said he intends to sign it. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported that the state Senate gave final legislative approval to the measure on Thursday. It now heads to Bryant, a Republican who was elected to lead the state in November -- at the same time an antiabortion "personhood" amendment failed when put to a statewide vote. During his first state of the state address in January, however, Bryant pledged he would not give up the fight.

Los Angeles police say they are investigating the death of a patient who had Lap-Band weight-loss surgery at a West Hills outpatient clinic last year. Paula Rojeski, 55, died Sept. 8 after having a Lap-Band device surgically implanted at Valley Surgical Center, which is affiliated with the 1-800-GET-THIN advertising campaign. The Los Angeles County coroner's office has not publicly released its autopsy report on Rojeski at the request of the LAPD, which is investigating the circumstances of her death, said Ed Winter, Los Angeles County's assistant chief coroner.

In findings that promise radical changes in the care of the 20 million U.S. patients with Type 2 diabetes, two new clinical trials have shown that weight-loss surgery brings about dramatically greater improvement of blood sugar control in obese diabetics than standard diabetes care. In both studies, even rigorously supervised regimens of diet, exercise and medications failed to bring blood sugar under good control after a year or more. In contrast, two teams of researchers - one in Italy, the other in the United States - reported that surgical procedures to reduce the size and sometimes the placement of the stomach often allowed subjects to discontinue diabetes medications within weeks.

Share Our Selves will be allowed to keep its dental clinic at the Rea Community Center at least until next January while the rest of the organization relocates, according to an agreement reached with the City Council this week. "That was a crucial point with us," said Jean Forbath, founder and executive director of SOS, which provides emergency food, clothing and financial assistance to about 5,000 Orange County families.

Two outpatient clinics affiliated with the 1-800-GET-THIN marketing company have temporarily halted Lap-Band weight-loss surgeries, less than one week after Allergan Inc.  said it would stop selling the device to companies affiliated with the massive ad campaign. The New Life Surgery Center in Beverly Hills and Valley Surgical Center in West Hills have stopped performing Lap-Band surgeries while they perform “a top-to-bottom medical and operational review” of their Lap-Band surgery business, the companies said in a statement.

  In an apartment on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, an opposition activist retrieves stashes of medicine and bandages from hiding places. "What we need most right now are empty blood bags, oxygen masks and tetanus shots - and also a heart defibrillator," says the medical volunteer, tallying packages of antibiotics soon to be channeled out to protest strongholds. The trick is to move the supplies quickly so no evidence remains if security forces raid the premises, says the activist, who, like others interviewed, declined to be named for security reasons.

The identity and motive of a gunman who opened fire in the lobby of a Pittsburgh psychiatric clinic remained shrouded in mystery Friday, a day after the attack that left him and a therapist dead and seven people wounded. As of Friday morning, officials could say only that the gunman was a white male. No age has been determined. Efforts to run the man's fingerprints through national databases have so far turned up no matches, according to the Allegheny County medical examiner's office.