In Brief: Kaiser Pledges $2 Million For New King Hospital; Blue Shield Foundation Grants $200K To L.A. Care Health Plan
Kaiser Pledges $2 Million For Maternity Services At New King Community Hospital
Kaiser Permanente's Southern California division has pledged $2 million to expand maternity services at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital when it opens next year.
The money will be used to expand maternity services at the hospital and provide quality care to expectant mothers in South Los Angeles, which has a dearth of such services. South Los Angeles has among California's highest rates of of premature births, infant mortality and low birth weight babies, primarily due to a lack of basic prenatal healthcare services, according to the Community Health Councils. The majority of the residents of the region are either Latino or African-American, two minority groups that account for 67% of pregnancy-related deaths in the state, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.
“Our commitment helps lay the foundation for a great start for babies and their moms,” said Georgina R. Garcia, executive director of Kaiser's West Los Angeles Medical Center and a member of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital board of directors. “By supporting the expansion of these maternity services, we are bridging a health care gap, increasing access to healthcare, and improving the health of our communities.”
The original Los Angeles County Martin Luther King-Drew Medical Center was opened in the early 1970s, but was closed in 2007 by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors after decades of controversy about the quality of care being delivered at the facility. It is scheduled to reopen as a smaller community facility next spring,
Blue Shield Foundation Grants $200,000 To Expand L.A. Care’s EHR System
L.A. Care Health Plan has received a $200,000 grant from the Blue Shield of California Foundation to continue the development of its eConsult electronic health records platform.
The money will be used to expand eConsult to serve additional patients within the L.A. Care provider network, develop a new segment devoted to behavioral healthcare services and create a mobile application that would allow providers to access eConsult via smartphones and tablets. It will also be used to conduct a survey on how eConsult is impacting safety net care in Los Angeles County.
“Our initial support for the eConsult system has resulted in significant improvements in access to specialty care for historically underserved patients across L.A. County,” said Peter Long, chief executive officer of the Blue Shield of California Foundation. “This additional funding expands the successful model to more patients, and focuses this potentially game-changing innovation to better coordinate behavioral health care within the safety net.”
L.A. Care is the Medi-Cal managed care health plan for the county and is the largest public health plan in the United States.
“The safety net...is overwhelmed with the volume of patients needing access to specialty care. eConsult aims to ease this through technology,” said L.A. Care CEO Howard A. Kahn.
