Medi-Cal patients left high and dry by Dignity Health
Why were Dignity Health and Partnership HealthPlan of California (PHC) unable to agree on a contract for 2020?
As some of you may know, PHC is a nonprofit community based health care organization that contracts with the state to administer Medi-Cal benefits to our most vulnerable population.
Dignity Health is a nonprofit California-based public health organization which provides healthcare services to many citizens in the County and over the years has done an excellent job.
Dignity is also the official healthcare provider of the San Francisco Giants.
Dignity has been a great partner in Yolo County and has been very engaged with the community. Dignity promotes “Humanity”
and “Kindness.” And what a perfect mission: “to deliver compassionate, high-quality, affordable health services; serve and advocate for our sisters and brothers who are poor and disenfranchised; and partner with others in the community to improve the quality of life.”
Recently thousands of Yolo County citizens insured by Medi-Cal received letters from PHC telling them that because Dignity and PHC could not agree on contract terms for 2020, they would have to find new doctors, psychiatrists and other specialists.
Approximately 18,000 PHC members in Yolo County may be affected if an agreement isn’t reached by Jan. 31, 2020.
Many of those on MediCal have been traumatized by the health care system and many by personal adverse childhood experiences. ACEs are traumatic events that occur in childhood and adolescence, such as experiencing physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; witnessing violence in the home; having a family member attempt or die by suicide; and growing up in a household with substance use, mental health problems, or instability due to parental separation, divorce, or incarceration. More than two decades of research has documented the association of ACEs with health and well-being across the life span including higher ACEs scores being associated with a wide range of chronic diseases and leading causes of death and disability such as substance abuse, suicide, drug overdose, cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
Taking people’s doctors away is another traumatic experience. Without their primary care doctor they will need to re-establish new relationships with providers and share their very personal stories with those new providers. There is not a surplus of doctors in Yolo Country, and finding one willing to accept new patients is difficult.
In our Mental Health Court we work with criminal justice involved Yolo County citizens who have seriously mental illnesses ranging from bipolar to schizophrenia.
It pains me to think that many of these participants will now have to find new doctors.
So what was the breakdown between PHC and Dignity? Actually, it really doesn’t matter — Yolo County citizens should be saddened and outraged. Our leaders should engage and get PHC and Dignity back to the bargaining table and don’t let them out until we see the “white smoke.” Let’s not leave our poor and disenfranchised in the dust. We can still right the ship. Let’s get this right.
“So what was the breakdown between PHC and Dignity? Actually, it really doesn’t matter — Yolo County citizens should be saddened and outraged.”