COUNTY'S CARE GIVEN GOOD DIAGNOSIS : MOBILE PROGRAM TOUTS HEALTH SYSTEM.Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer Accompanied by patients, physicians and two women dressed in vegetable costumes, county health officials took to the road Wednesday to trumpet a public health care system they say is the best in the state. The Ventura County Health Care Agency mounted a ``barnstorming
Barnstorming bus tour'' of county clinics aboard a mobile medical unit. The cross-county tour was designed, said Ventura County Medical Center Ventura County Medical Center is a hospital in the city of Ventura, California, USA. It is a 208 bed acute care hospital. The county also operates a 49 bed campus in Santa Paula. director Samuel Edwards Samuel Edwards (March 12, 1785 - November 21, 1850) was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Samuel Edwards was born in Chester Township, Pennsylvania. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1806 and commenced practice in Chester. , to draw attention to the county's eight community clinics, neighborhood medical centers where 300,000 people without private insurance are treated every year. ``We get them before they're in real trouble,'' said Edwards. ``More and more people don't have private insurance and it's falling in our hands to treat them. We're really a model for how a public system can fill that need.'' The county established its clinic network 10 years ago after a budget crisis at County Hospital forced administrators to take a hard look at the way public health care is delivered. ``It was clear that the model of people getting sick and coming to the hospital was out,'' he said. ``We had to get medical care out into the community.'' The neighborhood clinics operate like health maintenance organization insurance programs, in which a primary care doctor is assigned to each patient. These doctors refer patients to specialists and surgeons, cutting medical bills drastically and helping stop illnesses before they develop. ``We make sure kids get immunized, we make sure cuts get stitched, we make sure colds get taken care of,'' said Dr. Lanyard Dial, director of the county family practice residency program. ``Otherwise those things can end up in the emergency room.'' Many patients end up in emergency rooms because they did not seek treatment for illnesses such as pneumonia or urinary tract infections urinary tract infection (UTI), n infection in one or more of the structures that make up the urinary system. Occurs more often in women and is most commonly caused by bacteria. . Treating those illnesses when they become acute is expensive and can be painful for the patient, said Bill Wood, director of ambulatory medical care for the county. ``The most expensive sort of care you can get is in the emergency room of a hospital,'' said Wood. Admittance Admittance The ratio of the current to the voltage in an alternating-current circuit. In terms of complex current I and voltage V, the admittance of a circuit is given by Eq. (1), and is related to the impedance of the circuit Z by Eq. (2). to County Hospital has been reduced by half since the clinics were established, said Edwards. Once on the verge On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning) is a play written by Eric Overmyer. It makes extensive use of esoteric language and pop culture references from the late nineteenth century to 1955. of bankruptcy, the county health care system is now solvent and delivering $160 million in medical services each year. Most revenue comes from patient fees, but 7 percent is contributed by the county general fund. The budget is the envy of health care systems across the state, said Richard Ashby, Medical Director for the Ventura County Medical Center. Administrators in charge of the troubled Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. County system have cited the Ventura network as a model, he said. ``They're trying to make a system like what we've had here for the last ten years,'' Ashby said. ``We had to do it because we had no money in the first place. We know all about being lean and mean.'' Three doctors at a Thousand Oaks Thousand Oaks, residential city (1990 pop. 104,352), Ventura co., S Calif., in a farm area; inc. 1964. Avocados, citrus, vegetables, strawberries, and nursery products are grown. clinic, which serves about 1,200 patients a month, offer routine health care along with more specialized services like allergy inoculation inoculation, in medicine, introduction of a preparation into the tissues or fluids of the body for the purpose of preventing or curing certain diseases. The preparation is usually a weakened culture of the agent causing the disease, as in vaccination against and even tattoo removal. Patients who develop relationships with their neighborhood doctors, said medical director Chris London, are less likely to end up in the hospital. ``If I can catch something early enough, people don't end up missing work or school or consuming precious health care dollars,'' London said. ``We get a step ahead of things and save the patients pain and the county dollars.'' The county operates two clinics in Simi Valley, at 4531 Alamo Alamo Eighteenth-century mission in San Antonio, Texas, site of a historic siege of a small group of Texans by a Mexican army (1836) during the Texas war for independence from Mexico. Street and 2003 Royal Avenue, and one in Moorpark at 6559 Princeton Avenue. The Thousand Oaks clinic is located at 223 E. Thousand Oaks Boulevard. Call (805) 648-9844 for more information. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: (color) Dr. Chris Landon performs a checkup check·up n. 1. An examination or inspection. 2. A general physical examination. checkup See Yearly checkup. on Giabr an Rodriguez, 3, during a tour of the Conejo Valley Family Care Clinic on Wednesday. Michael Owen Baker/Daily News |
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