MODESTO BEE
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

By KEN CARLSON
BEE STAFF WRITER

Last Updated: October 19, 2005, 06:40:55 AM PDT

After hearing pleas to preserve services for the disadvantaged, Stanislaus County supervisors on Tuesday evening unanimously approved cuts designed to reduce an $8.8 million Health Services Agency deficit.

Several speakers, including doctors who treat the county's poorest patients, urged the Board of Supervisors to reconsider the cuts, which will reduce patient volumes by 20 percent and force up to 19,000county residents to go elsewhere for care.

A representative of Doctors Medical Center of Modesto warned that the reductions violated a 1997 contract under which DMC provides hospital care for the county's indigent patients.

Mike King, the hospital's chief financial officer, said the contract requires the county to maintain the same number of clinics and same level of urgent care services as in 1997.

"Simply seeing the same number of patients is not enough," he said.

The plan approved Tuesday calls for closing the county's health services complex on Scenic Drive and reducing clinical patient visits from 260,000 to 207,000 per year — the same level as in 1997. Supervisor Ray Simon said county legal staff had assured the board that the service reductions do not violate the contract with DMC.

Speakers also expressed concerns that the hospital's emergency department would be overwhelmed with patients turned away from county clinics. "We are already stretched to the max," said Robert Donovan, an emergency room physician for the hospital.

Supervisors said the health clinic system has become too much of a burden on the county's general fund. Even with the cuts, the county will spend $16.7 million in the next three years to subsidize the six remaining clinics.

Supervisor Bill O'Brien said he agreed with many of the concerns expressed during the hourlong public hearing. But he said economic decisions had to be made in order to preserve programs such as the Family Medicine Residency Program, which trains young doctors.

"If we ignore the problem, the whole health care system is going to implode," he said.

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