UCLA Will Take Heart Patient : Medicine: Moving Hector Bojado to the center in Los Angeles could qualify him for Medi-Cal.

A specialist at UCI Medical Center has decided to move Hector Bojado, an indigent in need of expensive heart-transplant surgery, to the UCLA Medical Center for the procedure, a UCI spokeswoman said Friday.

The decision by Dr. Richard Ott, UCI Medical Center’s director of cardiac transplantation, would allow Bojado, a 29-year-old Anaheim plastics molder, to apply for Medi-Cal insurance at the UCLA center, which is a Medi-Cal-approved facility, according to Elaine Beno, a spokeswoman for the medical center here.

Beno said the decision was made after a long consultation Friday afternoon between Ott and Bojado. They weighed Bojado’s options, including an offer Friday by Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach to perform the needed transplant operation.

But Hoag’s offer was rejected in favor of taking Bojado to the UCLA center in Westwood, where attending physicians such as Ott can collaborate on Bojado’s current and follow-up care, Beno said, reading from a prepared statement by Ott.

“UCLA has agreed to evaluate Hector,” Ott said in the statement. “Mr. Bojado joined us in reviewing his medical options and has secured an appointment with UCLA’s cardiac transplant evaluation service.”

Bojado suffers from cardiomyopathy, a persistent virus that attacks the heart, causing an irreversible swelling that has left him with little chance of surviving unless he receives another heart. A native of Colima, Mexico, Bojado has no nearby family. He had been employed as a plastics molder but had worked for only two months at his last job and consequently did not qualify for health coverage.

For Medi-Cal to cover the costs of a heart-transplant operation, the surgery must be done at a hospital where at least 12 previous transplants have been performed, with a 70% success rate a year later. Bojado would have been UCI Medical Center’s eighth heart-transplant recipient.

UCLA Medical Center, which was the first hospital in Los Angeles to perform a heart transplant in 1984, has completed more than 100, according to Richard Elbaum, spokesman for the medical center.

Reached Friday night, Elbaum said he had not heard about Bojado’s scheduled appointment or when it might occur.

Generally, when a patient is referred to UCLA, he or she receives a diagnostic evaluation to determine if the patient is a good candidate medically, hospital officials said.

The process can take several days and also requires meetings with a hospital committee, which ultimately will decide whether to put Bojado on the list. If his situation is deemed critical, Elbaum said, that evaluation process is condensed.

Elbaum was not sure whether Medi-Cal’s formula would pay 100% of the costs of the transplant.

Once Bojado becomes a candidate for the surgery, he is put on a priority transplant list with the Regional Organ Procurement Agency based at UCLA. There now are 22 patients on the list, and 19 more on a similar list at the Southern California Organ Procurement and Preservation Center in Los Angeles.

Originally, doctors sought to have the transplant procedure done at UCI Medical Center, but its high cost, which could range from $70,000 to $150,000, was an obstacle. And medical center officials decided that they could not absorb the cost.

UCI Medical Center’s Auxiliary, the center’s fund-raising arm, had mounted a campaign to raise an $80,000 deposit required of patients such as Bojado, who have no medical insurance, to be put on the center’s heart-transplant list.

The auxiliary was able to raise nearly $50,000, and its members then tried to persuade hospital administrators to reduce the required deposit to that amount.

When that proposal was rejected, auxiliary spokesman Jim Curran, acting as a private citizen, contacted Hoag officials to see whether they would take Bojado as a patient.

A frustrated John Stroh, the medical center’s auxiliary president, had commented that Bojado’s condition could worsen, adding, “and in the meantime we’re playing this political football.”

On Friday, Hoag administrators responded to the appeal, agreeing to admit Bojado for a heart transplant. But it ultimately was decided to send him to UCLA, Beno said.

Both Ott and Mary Piccione, the UCI center’s executive director, said Friday that they were grateful for Hoag’s offer, as well as for the support of Orange County residents who donated about $48,000 to the auxiliary for Bojado.

The auxiliary has been desperately trying to raise money so that Bojado could be considered for the operation. Originally, the organization was scrambling for money for two people, Bojado and Stephen Regalado, 23, of Mission Viejo, who also had no medical insurance. But Regalado died without ever making a transplant-waiting list.

Contributors who pledged funds, some of which had been earmarked for Regalado or Bojado, will be given their choice of leaving their donation in a trust for Bojado for follow-up care, transferring it to the general Patient Emergency Trust Fund, or having their donation returned, Beno said.