Medi-Cal Patients Need Choices

* In your Aug. 24 editorial, “It Requires Patients,� you outline several of the challenges currently facing the UCI Medical Center and describe several of its attempts to remain viable in a rapidly changing health care industry.

As you suggested, community-based solutions to UCIMC’s problems are preferable. UCIMC has historically been a valuable part of the safety net in Orange County and has served many of the county’s poor and uninsured residents. In the past, the poor had very little choice but UCIMC.

Today, through CalOPTIMA, Orange County’s Medi-Cal administrator, Medi-Cal beneficiaries can select a physician, health plan and hospital. Medi-Cal beneficiaries have a choice and are no longer relegated to a small handful of hospitals willing to serve them. If the beneficiaries do not like the service or care they receive, they can select another health plan from the CalOPTIMA network. Health care providers are now competing to get Medi-Cal beneficiaries.

While UCIMC is a valuable health care provider in Orange County and understandably is trying to attract patients to remain viable, no one should be forced to use the medical center if they have elected not to do so.

There are a number of options to explore in trying to help UCIMC, but one of those options should not include requiring the poor to use the medical center, as has been suggested by the medical center’s administrators.

If the poor are now selecting health care providers other than UCIMC, the medical center should examine the reasons. UCIMC will be successful in attracting and retaining patients if they can figure our why some patients choose to leave.

NANCY RIMSHA

Member, CalOPTIMA Advisory Committee