LA County braces for crowded hospitals as Medi-Cal expands Daily Breeze
Los Angeles County, which is legally obligated to care for indigent patients, is scrambling to reorganize its health delivery system to keep patients who will now be eligible for Medi-Cal - and will have a choice about where they receive care.
"We know one thing for sure - there will be a flood of new Medi-Cal patients, and we cannot afford to lose those patients," said county Supervisor Gloria Molina, who pushed for a study to look at the county's options. "The worst thing that could happen is we become a system of emergency rooms that take all comers, and if that happens, we will go broke."
Private hospitals in the South Bay and elsewhere are also acting quickly to prepare for a surge of newly insured patients as reform phases in over the next four years. Many of the uninsured will now qualify for public coverage, such as Medi-Cal, or will be able to enroll in the new health insurance exchanges.
Either way, the health delivery system - both public and private - will have to accommodate a rapidly changing payer mix, and an influx of hundreds of thousands of new patients.