Unlicensed Clinics May Be on Rise

The arrest of two men on suspicion of practicing medicine without a license in a Santa Ana garage may be indicative of an explosion of underground clinics that serve non-English-speaking immigrant families who have neither the resources nor the knowledge to find legitimate health care, officials said Wednesday.

“Unfortunately, this is getting to be more common,” said Jose Vargas, Hispanic affairs officer for the Santa Ana Police Department. “Here in Santa Ana, there is at least one foreign doctor working the city without a license at any one time. They are working out of garages, out of their homes. We tell people, you’d better be careful because some of these so-called doctors are not really doctors.”

On Tuesday, police arrested Manuel Javier King, 61, and Hector Raul Becerra, 29, in a garage in the 1200 block of South Broadway as one of them was administering a shot to a 6-month-old child. They were released on bail Wednesday from Orange County jail, investigators said, and could not be reached for comment.

The two appeared to practice general family medicine and did not perform any surgical procedures, police said. Investigators also said that Becerra identified himself as a licensed physician in his native Mexico and that King, also a Mexican national, once sold medical supplies at a swap meet in Orange.

During the arrests, police seized an assortment of medical equipment, including syringes and intravenous bottles. Antibiotics and other medicines were also taken as evidence, police said.

Residents of the community of neatly tended, 60-year-old houses said a steady stream of Latinos flocked to the house at all hours of the day and night. They said they did not know what was taking place, and some said they feared drugs were being sold.

And even after the arrests, people continued to drop by the house asking for the “doctor” and the “clinica.”

Vargas said he knows of another case under investigation by police where a man posing as a doctor administered a penicillin injection to a boy who turned out to be allergic to the drug. He also said his partner is going to testify this week in a case against a curandera, or folk healer, who is charged with grand theft and conspiracy after she allegedly bilked a family out of thousands of dollars while promising to cure a sick child.

Experts say the growing influx of immigrants, many of whom speak little English, combined with the skyrocketing cost of legitimate health care has created a natural market for practitioners--some of them fraudulent-- who are accepted because they share the same language and cultural traditions.

They run the gamut from folk-healing curanderas , who may be prescribing nothing more than prayer and faith to cure certain ailments, to doctors in such covert locations as back-alley garages who are diagnosing illnesses and dispensing medicine obtained in Mexico, where prescriptions are not required for many drugs.

Irene Martinez, director of the Neighborhood Services Center in Santa Ana, said her staff, which conducts prenatal health services and offers preventive medical advice, frequently hears from her clients about “underground practices.”

“Look, a lot of the people who come to our center come with no money, no insurance and with some health problems,” she said. “Now, there is no way they can pay $50 or $60 for a doctor’s visit and on top of that $20, $40 or $50 for a prescription. So this is why they go to this type of setting.

“It’s not that I’m excusing these practices, because it’s not in the best interest of the patient,” she said. “Sure, you want to have quality health care, but what do these people do?”

Felix Rodriguez, supervising special investigator for the Medical Board of California which regulates doctor licensing, said his office investigates two or three similar complaints a year, but he said he believes that many more cases go unreported.

“Usually the patient is undocumented, and the so-called doctors know they won’t report them to authorities because they may be concerned about their own status,” he said. “Usually, when we begin the investigation, the people who complain don’t want to go public. The information may have been passed on by word of mouth so we can’t substantiate it.

“With the population growth, and the increasing number of undocumented families, there are many people seeking medical care, and some people take advantage of them. But it’s not restricted to Santa Ana.”

Jackie Lincer, district administrator with the California Department of Health Services, which oversees the licensing of clinics, also said his agency receives few complaints.

“But the population that these people are servicing may not complain to us,” she said.

Lincer said about 25 mental-health and general-medicine clinics are licensed by her office in Orange County. But she said that figure is not indicative of the large number of clinics that have sprung up recently in some communities, such as along Bristol Street in Santa Ana, that cater to a Spanish-speaking clientele.

Jorge Lopez Espana, a physician licensed to practice in his native Guatemala but not here, works at the Neighborhood Services Center, seeing about 300 clients a year and through them, he can see the dilemma.

“More often than not, the people who come here know that I am a doctor, but my only job here is preventive medicine,” he said. “I cannot prescribe. If they have a serious problem, I am very clear about it; I tell them I have no authority to prescribe medicine for them. I tell them to go to one of the state or county-funded clinics.

“The response of the people is, ‘They will tell me (at the county or state clinic) to come for a visit in a month or two. If I do that, I could be dead.’ Seeing this, you can see why they go out and seek a person who can help them immediately.”