Poor Patients Get Quality Care at Public Hospitals
Regarding Petula Dvorak’s article “Special Delivery” in the Sunday, April 5, 1992, Westside section of the Los Angeles Times, I wish to extend my appreciation to Dr. Hasserjian and his colleagues for their generous and very much appreciated acceptance of uninsured patients into their practices for obstetrical care. Also kudos to St. John’s for its willingness to take a share of these less-fortunate patients. If there were a general move by all obstetricians and hospitals to accept a limited number of these underinsured or uninsured patients, then the burden placed on our public hospital system and the Department of Health Services for Los Angeles County would be much more manageable.
This article would have been just as informational without unnecessary derogatory comments about our county hospital system. It does a great disservice to the dedicated men and women working in overcrowded, over-utilized, underfinanced institutions. Sharing the recognition with Dr. Hasserjian and his colleagues should be these dedicated individuals who provide high-quality medical care under difficult conditions. The 10 patients a month fortunate enough to participate in the St. John’s program are a very small fraction of the over 30,000 who request and receive obstetrical care from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and its county hospitals annually. These comments only serve to further frighten the women who must receive their care from the public hospital system and potentially may cause them to delay seeking necessary care.
It is important for your readers to realize that the county hospitals are not the problem but part of the solution. We are very efficient health care facilities with lower costs per hospital day than virtually all similar institutions in Southern California. We are continually being asked to do more and more with less and less. We are what we are because of inadequate facilities, capital equipment and personnel, i.e.: inadequate funding. We are unable to provide luxury hotel accommodations and service that Americans have come to equate with hospital care. We are the messengers of you, the public, through your elected representatives, on the county, state and federal level, delivering the kind of medical care you wish to provide to our less-fortunate neighbors.
We, in the county hospitals, wish to continue to encourage such programs as developed by Dr. Hasserjian and St. John’s in order to better serve as many of the pregnant women in Los Angeles County as possible.
DR. CHARLES R. BRINKMAN
