Community Clinics Cheer Tobacco-Tax Funding Plan

Directors of Orange County’s financially strapped community clinics on Tuesday welcomed a proposal to funnel state tobacco tax revenue to their programs, saying the money will help provide essential health care for low-income patients.

“Obtaining funds is a daily struggle and ongoing need for community clinics,” said Faith Hagerty, president of the Orange County Coalition of Community Clinics.

The money “is definitely going to be helpful and will ensure, at least for a while, that low-income people continue to be served,” she added.

However, some clinic directors objected to parts of the funding proposal by county health officials that would penalize clinics that are not Medi-Cal providers.

The county is scheduled to receive about $22 million a year for two years from a surtax levied on cigarette and other tobacco products under Proposition 99, the statewide initiative approved by voters in 1988.

In addition to recommending new funds to help shore up the county’s fractured trauma system and establish two new birthing centers, health-care officials also proposed that the Board of Supervisors allocate $1.5 million of the tobacco tax monies to the county’s 12 community clinics.

The clinics are nonprofit, independent agencies that play a vital role in providing health care for indigent and undocumented patients and those that do not qualify for Medi-Cal or the county’s medical program for poor people, Indigent Medical Services (IMS).

In 1988, nearly 122,000 people countywide received basic health services through the clinics, said Hagerty. “These are people who have no access to health care anywhere else, and the clinics go uncompensated,” she added.

Under the proposal unveiled by the county Health Care Agency on Monday, about $705,000 of the funds would be used for direct patient services--to help reimburse clinics for their large share of uncompensated cases.

Another share of the money would be used to strengthen the Coalition of Community Clinics by hiring an administrator to establish and coordinate centralized services, such as data collection, billing and training.

“The marvelous aspect is that we are 12 very diverse and unique community clinics and are able to come together with primary goals of opening access for low-income patients,” said Margie Fites Siegel, executive director of Planned Parenthood Orange County. “This is a recognition that we are an integral part of the health-care system in the county.”

Among the more controversial recommendations by the Health Care Agency is that some clinics receive a lower level of funding as an “incentive” to persuade them to join the state Medi-Cal system, which provides reimbursements for care of the poor.

“The feeling was that (becoming a Medi-Cal provider) would provide a more permanent source of revenue to the clinics,” said Health Care Agency medical director, Herb Rosenzweig.

Under the proposal, four clinics would receive the lower level of funding.

Jean Forbath, executive director of the non-Medi-Cal Share Our Selves clinic, which serves nearly 15,000 patients a year, called the disparity “punitive.”

“We have a different philosophy,” she said. “We have never been interested in collecting money, and we don’t have the staff to do it. We have also had a great deal of freedom to be outspoken in community on issues. If we joined the company store so to speak, that might change.”

Times staff writer Lanie Jones contributed to this report.