By Genevieve Bookwalter
As federal health care reform promises insurance for tens of thousands of Santa Clara County residents, local health clinics are scrambling to prepare for the expected onslaught in demand.
community clinics
Dr. Dimitri Sirakoff, the founder and medical director of Serve the People Health Center, rushed around his small, bright clinic tucked into an office complex in Santa Ana one recent afternoon. Whipping around in his white-coat and clutching charts in hand, the doctor has the impatient demeanor of a man on a mission. Sirakoff started this clinic with a skeleton staff because he saw in his own private practice a great need to serve the community of poor, low-income, and primarily Latino patients in Santa Ana who could not afford health care.
Eleven thousand Monterey County residents are expected to be eligible for healthcare benefits under the Bridge to Reform program, according to an estimate by the UCLA Center for Public Health Research. But the county can only afford to insure 1,000 to 1,500 of them this year, even though the federal government will match its spending dollar for dollar.
Community clinics across California are short of funds to care for the patients they have now, and their managers aren’t sure they will be able to keep pace with rising demand as federal health reform brings more patients to their doors.