$8.5-Million Grant to Aid Health Care for Uninsured

Dipping into a $350-million endowment created by the sale of Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center two years ago, a local foundation Tuesday announced an $8.5-million grant to provide health care to low-income, uninsured patients in central Los Angeles.

The money will be dispersed among five nonprofit hospitals and earmarked for the treatment of five diseases with a particularly high incidence in Los Angeles County, especially among ethnic minorities: cervical cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, asthma and diabetes.

It is the largest single grant to date made by QueensCare, a foundation created as a result of Queen of Angels’ controversial sale to the commercial Tenet Healthcare hospital chain in June 1998. State law required that profits from the deal, as well as the hospital’s existing assets, be transferred to a charitable foundation to be spent on community health care needs.

California Hospital Medical Center, just south of downtown, will receive the largest slice of the grant money, $2.3 million. The others are Glendale Memorial Hospital, $1.7 million; White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights, $1.7 million; Good Samaritan Hospital near downtown, $1.6 million; and St. Vincent Medical Center in the Westlake area, $1.2 million.

But critics of the foundation worry that not enough of the grant money will go directly to inpatient care. Lark Galloway, executive director of the Community Health Council, a health advocacy group that opposed the Queen of Angels sale and has been monitoring QueensCare’s activities, said the charity grossly underspent its trust funding last year.

“The area they serve is one of the most densely populated areas in the county, with one of the highest concentrations of uninsured people,” Galloway said. “So why haven’t you been able to spend that money and more?”

Galloway said she is concerned by the fact that the grant money earmarked for direct care will not be donated in a lump sum, but rather as a fund that the hospitals can bill against.

But Terry Bonecutter, chief executive for QueensCare--which also operates six of its own clinics--said the grant is notable because of its focus on treatment. Many public health programs donate money toward medical screenings, he said, but when tests come back positive, low-income patients usually end up at overcrowded county hospitals.

“The public health system is often lined up [to the point] where they have to wait months for treatment,” Bonecutter said. “We wanted to offer a private alternative at not-for-profit hospitals so when [the disease is] discovered, they can actually go into these hospitals for the care and treatment, and QueensCare will pay it.”

Each of the five targeted diseases, when diagnosed early, can be successfully treated. Studies have shown that all occur at high rates in Los Angeles County--the incidence of cervical cancer, for instance, is more than double the national rate. The county also has disproportionately high mortality rates for diabetes, asthma and cervical and breast cancer.

One problem, said Bonecutter, is an underlying fear of the health care system among the county’s burgeoning immigrant population.

“Immigrants that are undocumented are afraid [that] if they approach health care, it’s going to be held against them,” he said. “So what happens is they don’t go in for the screening until they’ve developed the breast or the cervical or prostate cancer, and it’s beyond just a minor treatment--it becomes a major treatment or surgery.”

What’s more, the swelling ranks of the uninsured in Los Angeles County--which has the largest and fastest-growing uninsured population in the nation--are driving nonprofit hospitals “to the brink of financial disaster,” said Arnold Schaffer, president of Glendale Memorial Hospital.

Schaffer said 60% to 65% of the state’s nonprofit hospitals are operating in the red.

Many low-income people learn that “they’ve got prostate cancer or breast cancer or cervical cancer . . . and then they need a surgery or radiation or chemotherapy, and there’s no one to pay for it,” he said.

Schaffer said grants like the one from QueensCare will help ensure the long-term survival of nonprofit hospitals.

“This is not a one-time deal,” Bonecutter said. “This is an ongoing partnership. QueensCare plans to be around for quite some time. This is something that we want to continue to do--to build a private safety net for the poor in central Los Angeles.”