Healthy San Franciscans Find a Home at San Francisco General Hospital
By Herman Wong
Federico Lauchengco represents the best of what Healthy San Francisco, the City’s universal health care program, hopes to achieve. Last year the 54-year-old enrolled in the program and began receiving regular checkups at San Francisco General Hospital. For the first time since he immigrated to the United States five years ago Lauchengco had his cholesterol level and blood pressure tested. His sister, Elvira Lazaro, who accompanied Lauchengco to the hospital, said Healthy San Francisco represented security against the unpredictability of illness. “There’s a place to go if he is sick,” Lazaro said. “It makes him feel secure that if anything ever happened he has a place to go.”
As of last month, a year and a half after its launch, Healthy San Francisco had more than 37,000 participants, providing health care access to roughly half of the City’s previously uninsured residents. In February the program expanded its eligibility requirements, offering access to San Franciscans who make as much as 500 percent of the federal poverty level, about $54,000 for an individual or $110,000 for a family of four. Up to 12,000 of the City’s currently uninsured residents fall into this category.
Under Healthy San Francisco, participants select a clinic, or medical home, to receive care. SF General is the second largest provider in Healthy San Francisco’s network of 31 clinics, which also includes the Potrero Hill and South East Health Centers. Through three of its clinics, SFGH provides care to one-fifth of Healthy San Francisco participants, roughly 7,400 people. Doctors at the hospital say that they’re seeing more patients, different patients, and, increasingly, patients seeking long-term, preventive care.
But the program also faces growing pains. Anecdotal evidence indicates that wait times for care have lengthened. And the economic downturn threatens to swell the number of uninsured while also forcing the city to cutting budgets, even at the hospital. “People are working harder with less right now,” said Dr. Hali Hammer, director of SF General’s Family Health Center, which provides care to 11 percent of all Healthy San Francisco participants. “But I think we all feel really good to be part of this innovative new system and just hope that once it’s clear that when we need more resources we will be able to get them.” Read the rest of this entry »
