County Residents Are Fortunate to Have a UCI Medical Center

I read your article (May 2) concerning the allegations by the state Medi-Cal administration that UCI (Medical Center) is not scheduling Medi-Cal patients as rapidly as patients with other types of funding.

I have no knowledge as to whether this is true. I do have strong feeling, though, on how UCI, on the whole, cares for the poor unfunded patients, including Medi-Cal, of Orange County.

Since the sale of the Orange County hospital to the university system in 1976, UCI has been forced to perform as a “county hospital.” Even though the indigent problem affects all hospitals in Orange County, UCI takes far more than its share. It has been doing this year after year and now is staggering from the tremendous financial losses that it sustains in caring for these patients.

I have been an emergency physician here in Orange County for the past 16 years. I am constantly amazed that UCI can continue to give the excellent care to its patients that it does--to all of its patients--when so much of the care it gives goes unfunded.

The reality is that UCI is not funded by our county government in the same way as other counties support their hospitals that do significant amounts of indigent care. To top it off, the state university system is allegedly now questioning its willingness to continue to help fund UCI’s losses.

From my experience with how UCI cares for it patients, I would guess that if there was some delay in the elective scheduling of surgical patients (I do not know that to be true), none of those patients sustained any ill consequences as a result. That is just not UCI’s way of doing business.

I also believe that the benefits that UCI gives the citizens of this county are immense, from the offering of the most specialized of services, such as its nationally known burn center and its excellent trauma center, to the offering of care to all of the poor.

I believe there is no university hospital in California today that does more for the community it serves than UCI. We are very fortunate to have this superb facility in Orange County.

PETER ANDERSON, MD

Director of Emergency Services, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center