Medical Care Industry Los Angeles County

As thousands of sign-carrying county employees, blowing whistles and chanting slogans, protested sweeping budget cuts on the streets of Downtown, the Board of Supervisors heard a stark warning Tuesday that they must move quickly to save the county's health care system from collapse.

As the nation debates patients' rights and prescription drug benefits, Los Angeles County is struggling on a more basic level to keep its health care system from melting down. The county's 13-hospital trauma network was just pulled back from the brink of collapse. Its Department of Health Services, solvent only because of two massive federal bailouts since 1995, is looking at a $506-million deficit in five years.

The balanced budget deal working its way through Congress could have a particularly harsh financial impact on California hospitals that serve the poor and on health maintenance organizations in the state that serve the elderly, Los Angeles County supervisors and members of Congress warned Wednesday.

State officials have canceled a crucial meeting in Washington that had been scheduled for today on renewing the federal waiver that keeps Los Angeles County's health care system afloat. The action led the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to send a letter to the governor urging him to aid them in extending the $1-billion plan.

El Proyecto del Barrio, a nonprofit group that operates two health clinics in the San Fernando Valley, plans to open a clinic to serve the West Valley's indigent in 1999. The new clinic will be financed with $4.6 million in revenue bonds sold by the California Health Facilities Financing Authority, a state agency that issues tax-exempt financing to nonprofit health facilities throughout the state, authorities announced Wednesday.

As thousands of sign-carrying county employees, blowing whistles and chanting slogans, protested sweeping budget cuts on the streets of Downtown, the Board of Supervisors heard a stark warning Tuesday that they must move quickly to save the county's health care system from collapse.

Who will pay for Marti Villery's chemotherapy treatments? Who makes sure that young Alex Flores, suffering from Down's syndrome and other health problems, can see his doctors and get his medications? And where will these patients and many, many more who depend on Los Angeles County's vast health system go when the doors close in five weeks?

In response to a television report about illegal storefront health clinics operating in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has voted to convene a task force on the matter. For the television news story, shown on KCBS-TV Channel 2 on Monday night, reporters posing as patients complaining of coughs and other mild symptoms visited several such clinics and were prescribed antibiotics and other remedies.

State officials have canceled a crucial meeting in Washington that had been scheduled for today on renewing the federal waiver that keeps Los Angeles County's health care system afloat. The action led the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to send a letter to the governor urging him to aid them in extending the $1-billion plan.

Don't get the wrong idea. When the Rev. Karl Kniseley II calls himself the "corporate conscience" of a $3-billion health care organization, he doesn't mean he's the kind of guy who strides down hospital corridors preaching the moral decrepitude of American techno-medicine.

The confrontation between the public and private health care sectors intensified Wednesday as Los Angeles County supervisors refused to reject a cap on the number of indigent patients county hospitals will accept next year, while calling for an investigation into allegations that the state's largest private hospital chain has cut its spending on charity care.

A medical center designed to serve gay and lesbian patients celebrated its opening Monday, and officials said they expect it to serve about 1,500 patients in its first year. Lambda Medical Group physicians will provide primary and preventive health care at offices in Wilshire Boulevard's Miracle Mile district, said Lorri L. Jean, executive director of the Hollywood-based L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, which runs the new medical offices.

In response to a television report about illegal storefront health clinics operating in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has voted to convene a task force on the matter. For the television news story, shown on KCBS-TV Channel 2 on Monday night, reporters posing as patients complaining of coughs and other mild symptoms visited several such clinics and were prescribed antibiotics and other remedies.

El Proyecto del Barrio, a nonprofit group that operates two health clinics in the San Fernando Valley, plans to open a clinic to serve the West Valley's indigent in 1999. The new clinic will be financed with $4.6 million in revenue bonds sold by the California Health Facilities Financing Authority, a state agency that issues tax-exempt financing to nonprofit health facilities throughout the state, authorities announced Wednesday.

Doctors used to wait in line for the chance to rent space in one of Robert Held's office buildings. The Westwood-based landlord charged as much as 30% more for his medical suites than ordinary office space commanded, and still demand climbed steadily. The waiting lists of doctors are long gone, and Held Properties Inc., owner of half a million square feet, is vexed by vacant medical offices. Rents still exceed those for general office space, but not by nearly as much.

The balanced budget deal working its way through Congress could have a particularly harsh financial impact on California hospitals that serve the poor and on health maintenance organizations in the state that serve the elderly, Los Angeles County supervisors and members of Congress warned Wednesday.

The last patient was wheeled out of the old nursing home more than two years ago. The long hallways are empty, the examining rooms bereft of furnishings, the floors gritty with construction dust. But soon medical treatment will again be available in this complex under an ambitious plan for a new community health center to serve residents lacking adequate health insurance.

African Americans in Los Angeles County are only about 60% as likely as whites to undergo heart bypass surgeries and, along with Latinos and Asian Americans, trail white patients in obtaining other lifesaving heart procedures, according to a UCLA study released Tuesday.

Sparking both fear and hope, Los Angeles County this week launches the nation's largest and most complex effort to enroll poor people into managed health care programs. The hope is to cure a sick system beset by climbing costs and a bewildering bureaucracy and to broaden health care options for people long forced to take whatever they can get.

Launching a new era of public health care in Los Angeles County, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved the largest expansion of outpatient health clinics for the poor and uninsured in the county's history. The addition of 36 new clinics is the first stage in a sweeping restructuring of the county's health system from an emphasis on expensive hospital treatment to less costly preventive and primary care in the community.