SOUTH COUNTY : Health Care Van Makes Comeback

A mobile health van will soon be back on the road two mornings a week in the South County to provide family planning and pediatric care to the poor and homeless.

The mobile health unit, a 30-foot recreational vehicle converted into a doctor’s office, belongs to the Orange County Community Development Council, a private, nonprofit group that provides medical care, food and shelter to the county’s needy. The council has been designated as the county’s anti-poverty agency.

The new services in the South County were made possible under an agreement approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors. The agreement provides that the county’s Health Care Agency will hire and pay the doctors who work on the mobile unit, and the Community Development Council will reimburse the county at a rate of $50 an hour for the doctors. According to the pact, the total cost for the doctors will not exceed $50,000 a year.

Kathryn Kifaya, director of human services for CDC, said the mobile clinic will visit up to five pre-selected locations in the South County. Each visit will be advertised. The clinic will operate in South County about four hours a day for two days each week. Staff members will do follow-up paper work in the afternoon.

In 1988, when the CDC’s mobile free clinic was in full operation five days a week, it reached more than 4,000 patients a year. In those days a doctor, assisted by a technician, gave prenatal advice, administered injections and wrote prescriptions for illnesses ranging from infections to malnutrition.

The full-time service was discontinued Dec. 31, 1988, when UCI Medical Center stopped providing physicians.

UCI decided not to renew its contract with CDC because officials said the small mobile clinic was too cramped to be an effective learning environment. The university had used it to train resident physicians. However, officials also acknowledged their concern that continued affiliation with the clinic would have brought the medical center more indigent patients.

The van has since been operating as an AIDS outreach clinic.

When it returns to the South County in the coming weeks, it will be staffed by one licensed physician, a public health nurse, a technician and a medical clerk. But services under the agreement will be limited to family planning and pediatric care.

According to county officials, the agreement will “allow CDC to again become involved in the provision of medical services and the (Health Care) agency to augment its service delivery capacity in the South County.”

Kifaya said it is hard for some to believe that there is poverty in the South County. But officials said there are a significant number of low-income people and many senior citizens on fixed incomes.

“It is a tragedy that there are people in this county who feel that way,” Kifaya said. “Yes, there is poverty in South County and all over the county.”