No Providers, No Care

I’m taking a moment out of the hilarity of SXSW, a geek festival for filmies, music fans, and young software developers, to write about something much more important: upcoming lack of access to medical care. It is going to get worse and worse, folks, unless we keep on the government to change the incentives, fix the system, and protect us from the rising costs.

In the summers, I live in Half Moon Bay, a coastal community south of San Francisco populated by an amazing group of fishermen, farmers, construction workers, and commuters. Some of the people are descendants of the original Portugese fishermen who caught cod and salmon in the local waters (where it is becoming harder and harder to find them). Some are migrant workers who pick the vegetables and flowers that are grown in the beautiful fields along Highway 1.

Half Moon Bay, until recently, had a family medical center in town that treated all those people. Most of its docs were primary care physicians or pediatricians. Once a unit of Stanford, Coastside Medical Center became its own nonprofit organization a few years ago.

Thursday it suddenly shut its doors, stranding its doctors (who had appointments scheduled that had to be canceled), laying off its entire staff, and leaving its patients scrambling for their medical records. Below is the  statement circulated to the community on the Coastsider web site:

The Coastside Family Medical Center located in the Shoreline Center shopping
area closed its doors to business at noon Friday, and plans to file
bankruptcy papers within the next two weeks. All of the Clinic’s 35
employees are being released. Coastside is a nonprofit that logs 22,000
patient visits in a year—including a number of CUSD employees and
students.

If you are a patient of Coastside, please be advised that you will find
doors closed and locked at this time. For medical records or prescription
information, write a letter attention “Medical Records” to CFMC, 225 S.
Cabrillo Highway, Suite 100A, HMB, or fax the instruction to: 650.726.9317.
General inquiries can be directed to Bob Harless at
rharless@coastsidedocs.org.

That was my primary care center when I am in California. What do you suppose happened? A landlord himself in trouble and unable to extend terms or renegotiate a lease? A dry-up of the credit markets and the attendant small business lines of credit the Center needed for operations?  Insurance payments that arrived late and squeezed the docs out of every nickel? Embezzlement in the office?

Probably all of those. It doesn’t matter what happened, but you understand the consequences. And you will see more of them untilwe fix our health care system.

Tagged as: Coastside Medical Center, Health care, Medicine, Primary care