CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 12, 2008 | Garrett Therolf
Bruce Chernof, the embattled county health services director, announced Friday that he is leaving to become the chief executive of a new Long Beach-based foundation dedicated to improving healthcare for senior citizens. Chernof will be the first to lead the SCAN Foundation, with an initial budget of $205 million from the SCAN Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicare and Medicaid HMO. Chernof's resignation Thursday from his county post caught county officials by surprise, and some privately expressed anger that he departed when the county health system is facing major troubles.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 22, 2005 | Catherine Saillant, Times Staff Writer
Long Beach-based SCAN Health Plan is entering the Ventura County market, offering services in limited areas for seniors looking to supplement Medicare coverage, officials said. More than 50,000 seniors in Camarillo, Fillmore, Oxnard, Santa Paula and Ventura will now be able to choose between two Medicare Advantage HMOs, potentially finding savings, said Katharine Raley, an insurance counselor for the county's Area Agency on Aging.
HEALTH
July 2, 2001 | DAVID R. OLMOS, TIMES HEALTH EDITOR
For about 1.5 million California seniors enrolled in Medicare health maintenance organizations, the task of selecting a health plan has been daunting. Many people rely on recommendations from friends, feel-good advertisements or finding their doctor in the HMO's booklet. What's been needed is information that would allow people to directly compare how Medicare HMOs throughout California measure up on costs and services.
BUSINESS
April 23, 1997 | DAVID R. OLMOS, TIMES STAFF WRITER
For more than a decade, Sam Ervin has struggled to ensure that his modest experiment in health care--a program to keep people out of nursing homes for as long as possible--would survive in the rough-and-tumble managed-care industry. While SCAN Health Plan, the small, not-for-profit HMO that Ervin heads, has certainly survived, it has not flourished. And when Ervin tried to jump-start his company's growth recently by converting it to for-profit status, state regulators objected.
BUSINESS
July 20, 1992
Sam Ervin is chief executive of SCAN Health Plan, a Long Beach-based, nonprofit company mandated into existence by Congress. Called a Social Health Maintenance Organization, SCAN Health Plan--still in the demonstration phase--offers free hospital, outpatient and in-home health benefits to the elderly in Orange and Los Angeles counties using Medicare funds. The Social HMO model, Ervin says, could be a forerunner to a national health system. He talked recently with staff writer James M. Gomez.
BUSINESS
June 19, 1985 | JONATHAN PETERSON, Times Staff Writer
In Long Beach, 720 senior citizens are pioneering a novel way to confront the health-care costs of old age: They go to the SHMO. And if they're not up to the trip, the SHMO goes to them. SHMO? That's government talk for "social health maintenance organization," which may sound like gobbledygook but stands for a serious, experimental approach to health care for the elderly.