Closure of Clinics Would Leave Patients With Few Options : Health care: Budget cuts could end services at 16 county centers. The Board of Supervisors will make its choices on Tuesday.

Dora Velasco is worried. Seated in the waiting room of the Bell Gardens Health Center, the expectant mother wonders aloud what she will do if the county closes the facility.

“I’m ignored at the hospitals because I don’t speak English,” Velasco, 24, said in Spanish. “It’s going to be very hard for me.”

Velasco’s concern is well-founded. On Tuesday, the County Board of Supervisors will consider proposed budget cuts that could eliminate 16 county-run health centers, including the Bell Gardens center and clinics in Hawaiian Gardens, Norwalk, Pico Rivera and Whittier.

The supervisors also are considering other options, such as reducing hours and eliminating services at several of the county’s 47 health centers rather than closing some clinics. The Hawaiian Gardens clinic, for example, might be forced to reduce its hours from five to three days a week, said Margaret Berumen, chief executive officer for the Coastal County Health Centers.

These options would also affect low-income people who depend on the county for prenatal care, immunizations and other medical services.

The Long Beach Comprehensive Health Center, for example, is prepared to eliminate dental services, Berumen said. The downtown Long Beach center serves 516 adults each month.

“I’ve been with the county 13 years, and although it’s not unusual every year to be in a crunch, I don’t recall ever reaching this point,” Berumen said.

The supervisors are looking to cut millions of dollars from the Health Department budget as a result of state budget cuts. Another proposal calls for health employees to give up some benefits.

But the option that concerns health center officials most is closing 16 centers.

In Bell Gardens, for example, scores of the center’s more than 1,600 patients would be left to fend for themselves, doctors said.

The nearest public facility, the San Antonio Health Center five miles away in Huntington Park, plans extra night hours if the Bell Gardens clinic closes. Bell Gardens patients, many of whom rely on public transportation, said that is too far and that night bus rides are too dangerous.

San Antonio’s staff members also question whether they can handle the extra work, on top of the roughly 7,300 patients they see every month.

“We’ve peaked out,” said Barbara M. Dunstan, a county district nursing director at the San Antonio clinic. “Most of the people won’t get seen (immediately). We won’t turn them away, but we will have to ask them to come back.”

Dunstan said Bell Gardens patients would be referred to other public clinics or private hospitals, but she said neither option offers much hope. A number of county health centers that could accommodate the Bell Gardens overflow, including those in Pico Rivera, Watts and the Florence area, are also slated for closure.

Representatives of private hospitals and clinics have said they will not be able to absorb the county patients and have predicted similar closures in the private sector. Few, if any, of the patients have private health insurance, Dunstan said.

“The Hospital Council of Southern California has said this could destroy the health delivery system in Southern California,” Berumen said.

Workers at the Bell Gardens Health Center said they are worried that many of their patients will wind up with little or no medical care. The result, they said, could be an increase in tuberculosis, measles and other infectious diseases, as well as more premature births and hypertension among children.

The potential hazards are unsettling for many of the patients at the Bell Gardens facility.

“I’m all alone, what am I supposed to do?” asked Antonia Garcia, 20. “This is the only clinic that is close to my neighborhood.”

Times Staff Writer Roxana Kopetman in Long Beach contributed to this story.