Hidden Costs of Privatizing Glendale Health Center

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is currently considering a move to privatize Glendale Health Center under the premise that doing so could prove more cost-effective and efficient. Unbeknownst to the public are the hidden and wasted costs of handing over a clinic to a private agency. Under Proposition A, the County is required to provide a cost-benefit analysis demonstrating that services at Glendale can be performed more cost effectively by a private agency. The problem is that the analysis does not include the County staff time and Counsel time to put the clinic out to bid. This includes negotiations, vetting proposals and developing contracts. Also unaccounted for is the ongoing cost of county staff to monitor and audit contracts between the agency and county. Privatizing a clinic is never a complete hand-off. As an incentive for bidders, the County may agree to incur ongoing costs even after a private agency has taken over services. These take-over agreements can include relocating county staff, County-paid renovations and ongoing maintenance such as landscaping and utilities. In one example, the county paid over $140,000 to refurbish a facility to accommodate the new tenants. While the County is hard-pressed to find favorable leases for its departments and programs, it forfeits prime real estate to agencies long-term and lease-free. Not only is the County missing an opportunity to generate revenue from these leases, but it must also shoulder the additional cost of leasing and refurbishing new facilities. Glendale Health Center is one of two county facilities with an upgraded heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system; this is critical for the tuberculosis services provided at the County’s Public Health clinic which is located in the same building. The cost of installing a new HVAC system could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. To the detriment of thousands of patients there’s a final cost: losing access to culturally-competent, quality care from Glendale Health Center. One possibility is that patients will be relocated, requiring them to travel to the closest facility run by the new private health care provider, which may not provide adequate culturally competent care. Another likely scenario is that the clinic’s patients will rely on already inundated emergency rooms, driving up the costs for the county as a whole. Clients and staff hope the national drive for affordable health care will have positive results for community-based clinics like Glendale Health Center. They also say that with so much changing in health care, this is no time to take risks with a program that works and stick taxpayers with an expensive plan. “I am 57 years old and have been coming to Glendale HC for the past three years. I come here every three months, to make sure everything is okay. I love the nurses, they take good care of me, they make me feel comfortable and the staff speak to me in my own language,” says patient Noem Zoratiyan. Ojik Gholi, who works as a clerk at the clinic, states that “Our patients keep coming back to Glendale Health Center because of the great services we provide. We are booked till November. There is a long list of people who want to be seen by us. “