South L.A. Gets Medical Help From PacifiCare : Health: Responding to civil unrest, company foundation gives $400,000 for purchasing and equipping a mobile diagnostic center.

While the world focused on the obvious racial, political and economic inequities in Southern California after April’s civil unrest, Terry Hartshorn saw a different and equally inequitable situation.

Residents in South Los Angeles, he said, couldn’t afford proper health care.

So Hartshorn, president of PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. in Cypress, contacted Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, and the two of them figured out a way to provide better health care to the area’s uninsured and indigent population.

On Wednesday, the company’s charitable arm, PacifiCare Foundation, turned over a check for $400,000 to the Watts Health Foundation to purchase and equip a mobile diagnostic center with X-ray and mammography machines.

The new health care coach, serving indigent and uninsured residents of both Los Angeles and Orange counties, will be the first of its kind in the area, said Dr. Clyde Oden, chief executive officer for the Watts Health Foundation, which was founded shortly after the 1965 Watts riots.

“The civil unrest that happened really put a spotlight on the fact that we had to do something in a major way to help (the community) from a health care standpoint,” Hartshorn said.

With more than 2.5 million residents in the two counties lacking proper health insurance, the high-tech RV will be kept busy, making rounds as often as seven days a week, officials said. It will be ready to roll in four months.

“We’ll take the coach wherever there are roads,” Oden said. “This will help people break the cycle of misery.”

Indeed, a majority of uninsured people continue to suffer from medical ailments even though they have been seen by a doctor, he said, because they fail to get expensive X-ray and mammography services, so that further treatment is thwarted.

“Diagnostics becomes a major crisis for these people,” Oden said.

From Watts to Santa Ana, the coach will pull up to area churches, schools, community centers and homeless shelters--wherever there are people in need of free medical care.

The patients will be referred to the traveling health center by a network of social service agencies and community centers as well as physicians working at local clinics, Oden said.

“We will be able to tell them where they can meet us,” Oden said. The new coach will augment the Watts Health Foundation’s 10 mobile doctor’s offices. Those coaches provide primary care services, but not X-rays and mammograms, Oden said.

But while the van is being prepared, the Watts Health Foundation still needs another $200,000 to keep it rolling for its first year.

His nonprofit organization is seeking other funding sources for the balance. Oden said he hoped that the remaining money will come soon.

“There is the realization that this will make a positive contribution to the rebuilding of our community,” he said.