Health Clinic Closures

can restore started coming to the north hollywood health center so he could keep seeing his longtime position very few foreigners here in the waiting room where she tells him she's being relocated after the clinic closes if i can't they just like july four year old bristol is on disability says it has a number of health problems a couple years later total eclipse jerry explains to bristol that if he wants to get his prescription drugs paid for by his medicare ok and we'll have to go to one of two county clinics where he might have to wait for five months he says he could try a private physician but he'd likely have to shoulder

much of the cost of the drugs himself crystal says that's not an option the north hollywood hills center has been here since the nineteen fifties dr gary says it currently treats fifteen thousand people a year they're mostly latino but also asian armenian and russia the working poor and almost all of them get free or nearly free here many have chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure there's comfort two shots ring their kids fertilization with the shutdown all fifteen thousand of them will be looking for somewhere else to go back to dairy says the long wait for an appointment at the clinics that are staying open is just one reason why many are likely to go without care or wind up in an emergency room where likely to say a lot more people that are going to progress there dc is because there are going to postpone their medical their number one because a plan that the finances number two because they cannot have the

time to travel further or they may not even have the need to travel farther kerry says to prepare for the closure of the clinic began taking fewer patients of this month and he's already seeing the results are strategies to contemplation of mind that was not able to bike to come and get his medication revealed chronic closure who did not take his medication and ended up a hospital for a few days because of chest pains and high seas wondering how their patients will fare without them has everyone at the clinic on edge i'm frustrated i'm angry doctor my recon is the clinic's pediatrician this is my neighborhood i see my patients at the supermarket i see them in the street you know i'm part of this community as well and i'm angry and many levels kahn says the situation could become a public health disaster i can't even begin to tell you how many children i'm following for tuberculosis treatment every single week how many people i'm

treating for communicable disease intestinal disease is bacterial diseases parasites worms you name it and it's all out there besides referring patients to other county clinics dr khan is sending them to private nonprofit health centers like valley community clinic for miles a day most new patients who called the clinic are being turned away because the climate can't afford to treat them receptionist as anna del toro says it's a painful not to be able to help people who want to make a baby it's your heart clinics had an administrator diane chamberlain says she relies on private donors to make up for that gap between her level of government

funding and the actual cost of providing care that there's not enough private money to handle a sudden influx of hundreds of haitians are for women's reproductive health care and besides birth control sections care those types of things there is funding for those folks that doesn't help diabetics and it doesn't help that person with hiv infection things chamberlain predicts the crisis is also going to hurt small businesses that don't provide health insurance their work force will be secure and have to take more time off to get here i think the public needs to really rethink their perception of who goes to clinics it's the working people who are just not lucky enough to have health insurance back at the north hollywood health and her pediatrician my recliner meets with maria mendoza and her one year

old twins wendy and angie like many of the clinic's clients and dole said doesn't have health insurance for a holiday even okay mendoza wonders how far shall have to travel and if she'll have to pay more next time she or the babies get sick hi i'm alarmed as they're be hard to hire from equine on the bus my two babies get anything anything air extra money to be paying the county health department says closing this and the ten other clinics will save the county thirty six million dollars a year but that won't come close to covering the department's total budget gap which is expected to reach nearly eight hundred million dollars within three years if fans don't materialize soon the county may start closing emergency rooms for kpcc

news i'm elsa set sail in north hollywood