County Terminates Contract With Clinic

The county this week abruptly terminated its contract with the only clinic that provides mental health services to Spanish speakers, hired away its staff and opened a temporary clinic to serve its clients, an official said Wednesday.

The county, which had contracted with Santa Ana’s Clinica Nueva Esperanza, took the action because the clinic was on the verge of bankruptcy and failed to meet several key contract requirements, officials said. The contract with with clinic was to run through June 30, officials said.

By Tuesday evening, county officials had packed up the clinic’s records, hired its clinical staff and two receptionists on a part-time basis, and moved the operation to several empty rooms at the county medical clinic at 1200 N. Main St., said Teresa McFarland, program manager for adult community services with the county’s mental health office.

“There have been a number of problems at Nueva Esperanza. We reached a point a few weeks ago where they were understaffed and very close to bankruptcy, so we exercised our right to do a five-day termination of the contract,” McFarland said. “The clients weren’t receiving services.”

Rudy Moreno, who co-founded the clinic 20 years ago as Clinica Ometochli and is a current board member, said the clinic is reorganizing and seeking other funding so it can keep its doors open as a nonprofit mental health service provider.

“It’s a pretty serious blow. To regroup that type of funding is going to take a little bit of work and commitment from the community, and people coming in to support the Clinica, but I don’t have a doubt that we will be going in that direction,” Moreno said. “Unfortunately, we depended too much on county funds.”

Moreno said that for now, all clients will be referred to the county, and that the clinic is trying to restaff. He said it was difficult for the clinic to meet county requirements with the kind of funding it was receiving.

The clinic received about $473,000 this year from the county, the same as last year, McFarland said. The bulk of the clinic’s funding was from the county.

She emphasized that the county remains dedicated to providing culturally sensitive mental health services geared specifically to Spanish speakers. In fact, the county has increased its grant amount for the 1994-95 year by $100,000, she said.

“We realize that the program is really essential,” McFarland said. “We thought that we could serve the (Spanish-speaking) clients in our regular clinics, but we did an audit back in November and we realized that there really are clients out there who would fall through the cracks. They need to be served in a community-based setting.”

Three agencies, including Clinica Nueva Esperanza, are bidding to provide those services. The contract went to a bidding process this year because the county is obligated to seek bids on contracts every three years in order to avoid “sweetheart deals,” she said.

The county had considered funding Clinica Nueva Esperanza through the end of October, when the winning bidder takes over. But problems at the clinic in recent weeks had escalated, with the clinic’s therapists walking out in protest over pay problems, McFarland said.

The county hired the clinic’s staff because they are familiar with their clients’ cases, McFarland said. The clinic serves about 400 people, she said.