For at least 20 years, Leslie Love relied on the UC Davis Medical Center’s hospital and clinics for her health care. Her children and grandchildren went to the same doctors there.
“They cared about me,” said Love, a 57-year-old teacher’s assistant who lives near the academic medical center, which is located in Sacramento. “There’s people there that I can trust.”
But that trust was recently broken: Love has been fighting for follow-up care since her knee surgery at UC Davis in 2014. Love’s current Medi-Cal managed care plan, Health Net, ended its contract with the UC Davis Health System in January 2015. As a result, Love could no longer see the physicians there who had treated her knee.
The pullout, which affected an estimated 3,700 patients at the time, means that Health Net’s now nearly 123,000 Medi-Cal managed care enrollees in Sacramento County can no longer seek primary care at UC Davis.
Ever since, tension has been building over what some critics say is limited access for Medi-Cal patients at UC Davis’ health clinics.
Because it is financed partly by state taxpayers, the UC Davis Health System — like all University of California hospitals and clinics — is considered a public institution with a mandate to care for the poor.
That’s why some patients and their advocates are frustrated. They say UC Davis is not fulfilling its mission as a public hospital because the health system generally no longer accepts primary care patients covered by Medi-Cal managed care contracts. Medi-Cal patients still can receive specialized and emergency room care, as well as in-hospital stays.
HENRY KOTULA 