Medical Care

A lawyer for the state, citing "dramatic improvements" in state prisons, asked a federal judge Monday to end a receiver's control of California's prison healthcare system. Paul Mello, representing the state, told U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson that there has been a "virtual elimination of alleged preventable deaths" due to shoddy prison health services. "Circumstances have changed," Mello said. But James J.

The battle over California prison inmates' constitutional rights has come down to this: finger-pointing over who dreamed up the idea of giving convicted criminals taxpayer-funded bingo and yoga rooms. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown have lambasted efforts by J. Clark Kelso, the court-appointed overseer of prison healthcare, to spend $8 billion on a "gold-plated utopian hospital plan" for 10,000 inmates.

After she was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer that had spread to her left lung, Gloria Bailey's doctors recommended she have a mastectomy followed by hormone therapy to fight the tumors that remained. She followed their advice, but had a nagging feeling about the regimen. "The Lord was just telling me, 'They're not being aggressive enough,' " Bailey recalled.

A rising number of women, stung by job losses and dropped insurance coverage, are turning to clinics and family planning agencies for routine gynecological exams, contraceptives and abortions. As the economy worsens, some Planned Parenthood clinics are reporting a record number of abortions. Other women's health agencies say they are experiencing heavier call volumes, more visits and more requests for abortion funding.

Widowed and HIV-positive, Beatrice Acheing had no money to have her baby delivered in a hospital. But she admitted herself anyway to reduce the risk of transmitting the virus during childbirth. To her relief, the boy was born HIV-negative. But their ordeal had just begun. Hours after labor, both mother and baby were shunted into a locked, guarded room with other indigent patients. They were given one meal, sometimes two, a day, but no clothes or diapers for the infants.

Dena Lansford, 49, would like to have a cholesterol check, a mammogram and, soon, a colonoscopy. She hasn't seen a dentist in more than a year. She worries that she might suffer a similar fate as her mother, who had a stroke at 47. But after losing her job and health insurance last year, the Wildomar woman said, "I'm not doing any preventive care." As of February, an estimated 3.

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.

Los Angeles County supervisors have asked state officials to compel California nursing homes to prominently post their new federal star ratings, much in the way restaurants display letter grades. But the proposal faces opposition from patient advocates and nursing home officials who fault the five-star ratings system that went into effect last month, saying it overlooks significant violations and sometimes penalizes well-run nursing homes.

More than three years into L.A.'s crackdown on patient dumping downtown, officials have reached settlements with four hospitals and collected millions in payments. But although enforcement has been aggressive, much less has been done to address the problem at the heart of the issue: If patients can't be left on skid row, where should they go?

It was Easter weekend when people in Oaxaca noticed strange happenings at the state-run Dr. Aurelio Valdivieso General Hospital. Sections were suddenly off-limits. Security guards were added. The cop reporter at the local newspaper, El Diario Despertar, got a tip from a source at the hospital. Not above dressing its journalists up as paramedics, the paper sent two people to investigate. They quickly realized that the hospital was seized by alarm.