Donation to Reopen 4 Clinics

A publicly funded health plan is donating $200,000 to temporarily reopen four school-based medical clinics in Los Angeles County -- three of them in the San Fernando Valley -- that closed recently because of budget cuts.

The grant from L.A. Care Health Plan will allow the clinics at four Los Angeles Unified School District campuses to operate for the next four months, said John Wallace, a spokesman for the county Department of Health Services. The county had funded the clinics, which offer free walk-in services to a total of about 200 children each month.

To keep the centers open beyond the four months, Wallace said, the county Board of Supervisors will have to look for more donations, grants or county funding.

“We’re delighted,” said Maria Reza, assistant superintendent for student health and human services for L.A. Unified. “Without these clinics, many of these students would not have access to any medical services.”

The county board voted in August to close the clinics and 11 other community health centers. That trimmed $31.3 million from next year’s health budget, but the health department still faces a deficit of as much as $750 million in three years.

Last month, the clinics at Vaughn Street Charter School in San Fernando, Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, Pacoima Middle School and Gardena High School stopped providing such services to students and their siblings as immunization, pediatric care, health screenings and treatment for conditions like asthma, ear infections and soar throats.

Nearly 10 employees were reassigned, according to Gretchen McGinley, a county official who was in charge of the three Valley clinics. Those workers may return over the next several weeks, she said.

McGinley said she is happy that the clinics will have more time to look for permanent funding. But she added that the economic challenges are so serious that she is worried the centers may shut down again.

“I have hope,” she said. “But I don’t have confidence.”

Wallace said shutting the facilities again is a possibility but “not something we want to do.” L.A. Care oversees state and federal government-funded managed-care plans that serve more than 800,000 recipients of aid from Medi-Cal, CaliforniaKids and Healthy Families in Los Angeles County. After covering its costs, the organization uses its resources to help other nonprofit health-care efforts.

The 13 L.A. Care Health Plan board members, who represent medical and health-care professionals as well as Medi-Cal consumers, approved the grant to the county Oct. 3, said Jo Ann Yanagimoto-Pinedo, a spokeswoman for the organization. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted to accept the funds.

School-based clinics support the organization’s mission to serve low-income families and children, she said.

Chief Executive Howard A. Kahn said the funds “give L.A. Care an opportunity to assist in providing children with needed access to health-care services.”

Linda Rivera, a nurse at Pacoima Middle School, said she has been swamped with students since the clinic closed. Previously, the school sent its 300 seventh-graders to the facility for immunizations, she said.

Now, Rivera and a part-time nurse administer them. “I will be very grateful if they open it back up,” she said of the clinic. “There are so many students and so few nurses.”

Yvonne Chan, principal of the 1,400-student Vaughn Street Charter Elementary School, said the clinic there is badly needed, because many of her students are immigrants who have nowhere else to turn for services.

“It serves kids who live in poverty,” she said. “It is a very needy school, and achievement will not happen without kids being healthy.”