Clients travel from Tujunga and Downtown to Glendale to receive linguistic and culturally appropriate services from providers they know and trust. Most have been seeing their nurses and physicians for years; patient-provider relationships that are built on trust. As a primary care clinic, Glendale Health Center plays a vital role in ensuring the health and well-being of the community with nearly 11,000 patient visits each year.
I am deeply concerned that a proposed privatization of this facility would threaten the quality of care my constituents receive. Currently the County’s public-private partnership clinics have a diverse mix of patients and payer sources. An outside agency may not be able to absorb the volume of uninsured and medically indigent care visits that Glendale currently provides.
Privatization may also exacerbate already existing barriers to care to these patients or to uninsured or underinsured patients in general. Glendale Health Center is a key point of healthcare access of the continuum of care offered by L.A. County’s ValleyCare Network. Privatizing the clinic may weaken critically needed public services at a time when more and more people, jobless and without health insurance, depend on them.
Now more than ever we need to make sure that all residents of Glendale have access to quality, culturally and linguistically appropriate and affordable healthcare, and I am concerned that a privatization of the Glendale Health Center puts these services at risk. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
ADAM B. SCHIFF
Member of Congress