Thousands of low-income Los Angeles County patients who relied on UCLA Health specialists for organ transplants, cancer treatment, and high-risk pregnancies are now scrambling to find new doctors after a longtime Medi-Cal contract between UCLA Health and Health Care LA IPA expired on June 30. The termination cut off a relationship that had connected UCLA specialists to Health Care LA’s sickest patients since 2009, and it has already forced roughly 9,000 medically frail patients to look elsewhere for specialty care.
Health Care LA is the largest Independent Practice Association in California, anchored by more than 30 Federally Qualified Health Centers and community clinics that serve between 600,000 and 730,000 low-income Medi-Cal members across the county, according to the California Health Care Foundation. Sabra Matovsky, chief executive of Health Care LA, said UCLA declined to renegotiate the contract, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. Matovsky also said UCLA did not ask Health Care LA for a raise, according to the same report.
Phil Hampton, a UCLA university spokesman, said UCLA had offered to extend the contract, per the Los Angeles Times report. Health Care LA rejected that extension offer, the paper notes. Health Care LA said many patients had waited months to see UCLA specialty medicine providers, and the organization said patients were being told they could not receive urgently needed care.
A Tentative Fix, But Only For Some
Health Care LA and UCLA reached a tentative agreement to transition patients to other doctors over one year, the Los Angeles Times reports. Under that arrangement, patients with existing appointments will continue to receive care at UCLA Health facilities, and established UCLA Health patients along with those requiring agreed-upon services will also continue treatment there, per the same account. UCLA canceled a Friday news conference tied to the story, the paper notes…