Fiscal Plan Would Close 6 Valley Clinics

The proposed Los Angeles County budget plan released Monday would shut down six of eight San Fernando Valley health clinics, affecting thousands of low-income residents from Burbank to Canoga Park who rely on the facilities for basic health care from pediatric services to immunizations.

However, the area’s two major county hospitals--High Desert Hospital in Lancaster and Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar--appear to have been spared for the moment under an option presented to the Board of Supervisors by county Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed.

Reed’s proposal would also shut down County-USC Medical Center and significantly reduce outpatient services at each of the county’s six other hospitals.

Under a second option, four county hospitals, including High Desert and Olive View, would be closed, but Reed did not endorse that plan.

The supervisors, who must make the final decision by July 1, can choose either option or seek an alternative solution to bridge the county’s projected budget gap of $1.2 billion, which includes a $655-million shortfall in the Health Services Department.

“The options reflect that we need to rethink the way we deliver health care in the county,” said Kathryn Barger, health aide for Supervisor Mike Antonovich. “No one wants to [close] hospitals or health centers. It’s not our intention to dismantle health services.”

On Monday, patients and staff at the 29 county health clinics targeted for possible closure reacted with fear and dismay.

In the San Fernando Valley, the facilities are the Mid-Valley Comprehensive Health Center in Van Nuys and smaller neighborhood clinics in Pacoima, Canoga Park, San Fernando, Burbank and Tujunga. The Valley clinics handle more than 12,000 patient visits each month, according to county documents.

“What are the people going to do? Where will they go? This is the problem,” said Lionel Cone, health director at the Pacoima clinic. “Really, it would be disastrous. It means sick kids would have to go to Olive View, and that means terribly long waits.”

The San Fernando clinic, which Cone also oversees, was razed after the Northridge earthquake and now operates in two trailers in a parking lot.

Still, about 720 adults and children are treated each month for tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases and to receive immunizations.

At the Mid-Valley clinic, which has also been operating in trailers since the Northridge quake, when its building was destroyed, patients were startled to find that their visits might be among their last.

“Just tell them to keep it open,” said 19-year-old Maggie Ruiz, who scowled when she learned that the only clinics remaining open in the San Fernando Valley would be in North Hollywood and Glendale. She said she didn’t want to find another clinic. “You go to another place and they start making faces at you, they send you to the wrong place.”

Her friend, Maria Mercado, 23, was also troubled. She has been coming to Mid-Valley since she was pregnant with her daughter, Alicia.

“I’ve come here for three years, and I know my doctor and my daughter’s doctor,” she said with Alicia sitting in her lap.

Penny DeMara, 23, who was in the clinic accompanying a friend for a prenatal checkup, was astonished when told of the cuts. “It’s going to get to be like the Third World,” she said.

Maria Garcia stood in line at the clinic with her two daughters--3-year-old Carolina Nunez and 4-month-old Wendy Nunez--in a stroller. She had just walked for 35 minutes from her home on Sepulveda Boulevard to the clinic.

“I was so happy to find this place. It was so close,” said Garcia, who recently moved to the Valley from San Diego and has been taking her daughters to the clinic for about three months. She was distressed to hear that the clinic may close, saying through a translator: “In San Diego, it would never happen.”

Ana Maria Branchesi, nurse manager at the clinic, said patients in the area would stop receiving preventive treatment if Mid-Valley closed.

“That lady was walking here for 35 minutes with a stroller and two children,” Branchesi said, referring to Garcia. “Do you think that woman will take a bus” to another clinic? she asked rhetorically.

“Our patients can’t go to Glendale,” said Diana Sharp, business office manager for the Mid-Valley clinic and others. “If they have to go too far, they will generally wait.”

Both cautioned that communicative diseases would rise if patients decided to forgo preventive treatment.

James and Cindy Shuster were at the Canoga Park clinic for the first time, to get their 6-month-old son, Wesley, immunized.

“I think it’s rotten,” said James of the plans to close the clinic. “A place like this, which is so necessary--30,000 people, 22,000 shots alone--those numbers are just phenomenal,” he said of the annual treatment statistics.

The Shusters said they were dropped from Medi-Cal two days before Cindy gave birth to Wesley. James is a construction worker, and the two hope to get Blue Cross insurance for Wesley and their other son, 2-year-old Dylan.

Citing the high cost of health insurance, James said: “These county health facilities are quite necessary, and it would be horrible to shut them down.”