Funds Approved Toward Clinic Replacement

Nearly 2 1/2 years after the San Fernando Valley’s biggest county health clinic was wrecked by the Northridge earthquake, the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to begin building an $11.3-million replacement.

Supervisors allocated $724,000 for design work on a replacement for the Mid-Valley Comprehensive Health Center, which has long provided prenatal care, vaccinations and screenings for tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases for thousands of low-income residents.

The January 1994 quake shattered the old five-story building on Van Nuys Boulevard and forced nurses and administrators into tents and trailers in a parking lot. The health center was later demolished.

The building’s loss led to elimination of the center’s X-ray services because there was no lead-lined room in which to install the machinery. Ultrasound scans for pregnant women also were discontinued.

Crowded into far smaller spaces, county health workers had to turn away many patients, or refer them to a smaller clinic in North Hollywood or the county’s Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar.

Patient volume at the Van Nuys health center plunged after the quake and has yet to return to pre-quake levels. While the center recorded 94,000 visits by patients in the fiscal year before the quake, that number dropped to 70,000 last year.

Ernest Espinoza, a county health department administrator who helps oversee Valley clinics, said public health was never threatened by damage to the Mid-Valley center.

But he said patients have suffered by being made to wait longer for appointments and by having to travel to health facilities farther away.

“More patients request our services than we can [handle to] keep up with the demand,” he said. “There’s a definite community need.”

Espinoza said Mid-Valley staff members will move next winter into larger quarters in a rented commercial building a few blocks away. Construction of the replacement center is expected to begin in October 1997 and be finished by May 1999.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district includes the center, said its reconstruction has been slowed by private insurance companies that have “taken a very hard line” about reimbursing the county for quake damage at the clinic and other county buildings.

He said county attorneys “made some progress” in resolving insurance claims after the county filed suit against one insurer over San Fernando Courthouse, which remains closed by quake damage.

Dr. Vincent Gualtieri, a Sherman Oaks urologist and president of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn., a doctors’ lobby, said reconstruction of the Mid-Valley health center “is a godsend.”

He said while not familiar with details of the center, he is worried that unrepaired quake damage and budget cuts there and at other county clinics could open the door to a resurgence of communicable disease and other public health problems.

“There could be calamities if you don’t get some of these [facilities] better organized and in functional condition to meet people’s needs,” Gualtieri said.