Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Health-care workers protest the switch from primary care

By Jeff Kearns

San Jose Medical Group has announced that it will be cutting primary care services at its Los Gatos Primary Care Clinic Feb. 6 and converting it to a center for medical specialists--a move some support staff and patients say will drastically impact services throughout the area.

SJMG, which operates under the administrative supervision of UniMed Management Services, says that the changes are merely a means to improve patient services to its 100,000 customers in the South Bay. Critics, however, charge the move is motivated by the group's need to cut costs in order to repay $4 million in loans.

SJMG president Dr. Vic Corsiglia says that the loans aren't related to the changes at the clinics. "The changes are being made to improve patient care," he said. "We've had problems in the past several years with patient satisfaction, and it's our sense we need to reorganize."

SJMG is currently the second-largest health-care provider in the South Bay, with 13 clinics serving 100,000 people. In a recent survey conducted by the Pacific Business Group on Health, patients ranked it at the bottom of the list among providers in Washington, Oregon and California for quality of care and access to care. SJMG will also be closing another primary care clinic at Oakridge in South San Jose this February.

Los Gatos-area patients, many of whom are elderly, will be affected most by the cuts, patient services representative Maria Payne said, although the clinic also serves patients from other parts of the valley and the mountains.

More than 100 employees and patients protested SJMG's plans Jan. 7 with a candlelight vigil at the Los Gatos clinic. The event was sponsored by organizers of Health Care Workers Local 250, which represents 450 SJMG support staff.

"People need a place to go for their health care," Rebecca Cuffman, a patient, told the crowd. "Now I have to make my appointments three months in advance."

UniMed is a nonprofit subsidiary of Burbank-based UniHealth, a for-profit company that combines hospitals, physicians' groups and other health-related businesses throughout the state to form an "integrated delivery system," a new approach to health care that combines services into one provider.

Asked about charges made at the candlelight vigil, UniMed attorney Dennis Hunt, with the Sacramento law firm Stoorza Ziegaus Metzger & Hunt, responded on behalf of UniMed with a written statement which said, in part, "The Physicians Committee decided that they can provide maximum access to quality patient care by consolidating work at Oakridge with other facilities and relocating the primary care physicians currently in the Los Gatos clinic.

"By increasing the number of physicians at several locations, patients will have access to familiar doctors, staff and their personal medical records if their own primary care physician is not available."

In addressing the charge made at the vigil that Los Gatos patients might be referred to physicians as far away as Morgan Hill, the prepared statement said " ... the consolidation, which will be accomplished by March 1, will not move any doctor beyond easy driving distance, and some will simply move across the street to another San Jose Medical Group facility."

Among the speakers at the vigil was pulmonary care specialist Nancy Brown, who said, "Since San Jose Medical Group sold our physician services to UniMed, the quality of patient care has just gone down the drain."

Payne insists that primary care doctors will be relocated to already crowded clinics around the county and that the waiting time to see a doctor will double when the changes take place. "They're cutting acute care by 30 percent, which will put more pressure on primary care doctors because they will have to see more patients," Payne added.

X-ray technician Reiko Yoshida, who will stay in Los Gatos, says the change will impact the relationship between doctors and patients.

"When patients come here to see a doctor, they want to establish a relationship with one doctor, but they can't," she said. "The doctors are so pressured for time that they have to rush patients. When they know there's a waiting room full of people, they're pressed to see the patient as fast as they can."

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