Health Care

State Treasurer and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides stopped at an Arco station in Glendale Tuesday, but he wasn't there to fill up. Instead he announced plans to attract more power to the state, and he criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for being unable to keep the state free of energy shortages. At a San Fernando Road Arco gas station, Angelides said that if elected, within 100 days of taking office he would unveil a plan guaranteeing sufficient power to the entire state, with a 15% reserve.

GLENDALE— A Glendale man was sentenced Monday to five years in state prison for running a health-care fraud and money laundering scheme that affected more than 800 Medicare patients in the Los Angeles region, officials said. U.S. District Judge Margaret Morrow ordered Manuk Karapetyan, 46, to serve five years in prison after being convicted in March of multiple counts of health-care fraud and money laundering, officials said. "It was a serious offense that had a number of aggravating circumstances," Assistant U.S. Atty.

GLENDALE — Better coordination of health and social services available in Glendale is a top priority to better battle local health issues, a group of community leaders said Wednesday. Several dozen representatives from local health-care and nonprofit service providers gathered at the Glendale Adult Recreation Center Wednesday to discuss community health and quality life needs. The input will be used in the creation of comprehensive community needs assessments for the area's three hospitals — including Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center Verdugo Hospital — as required to be completed every three years under state law. Almost all in attendance agreed that while Glendale has a high number of health care and other social service providers, many work in isolation from each other.

CITY HALL — The City Council tonight is expected to approve spending $1.2 million to cover the cost of rising employee health-care costs — a trend that is weighing heavily in contract negotiations as the city continues to grapple with its own budget woes. Each year, the council approves amendments to employee contracts to cover insurance rate adjustments, which have continued to grow. "We've been hitting close to double-digit increases every year for several years now," said City Manager Jim Starbird.

Employers in Los Angeles County posted more than 2,300 ads for registered nurses in February, according to the state Employment Development Department. Providence Health & Services, operator of Burbank’s Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center and other regional hospitals, is among the companies posting the most ads. In fact, the health care industry has been one of the steadiest economic sectors in recent years, and Doug Dickstein has seen it firsthand. The owner of Right at Home In Home Care & Assistance in Glendale, Dickstein added 22 people to his payroll in 2010, bringing the number of workers at Glendale’s Right at Home franchise to 60. “The reality is that in this particular field, we’re not necessarily affected as much by the economic downturn,” Dickstein said.

Local hospitals and health care professionals agree they need to better integrate mental and physical care to address Glendale's most pressing health needs. For the Community Health Needs Assessment focus group, which meets once every three years, the most pressing public health issues affecting Glendale include obesity, smoking cessation, high blood pressure and diabetes. At a meeting Mondayof more than 30 representatives from local stakeholders - including Glendale Adventist Medical Center, Glendale Memorial Hospital and the Verdugo Hills Hospital - the city's most urgent health problems were discussed in terms of integrating services to have the highest impact.

Commutes to Northern California three days a week may seem excessive to the average Glendale resident, but for Robert Issai it's a simple duty. Issai was elected to the Catholic Health Assn. of the U.S. Board of Trustees June 15. Although his work as president and chief executive of Daughters of Charity Health System is in Los Altos, he commutes to and from the Northern California city to Glendale, where he and his family have lived for 31 years. Issai will now be responsible for overseeing more than 600 U.S. hospitals under the Catholic Health Assn.

Gretchen Hoffman Republican Keith Richman wants a chance to continue to work on the legislative priorities he pushed for during his first term in the state Assembly. Richman is campaigning against Democrat Paula Calderon and Libertarian Karl Lembke to keep his seat in the 38th Assembly District, which serves 7% of residents in the unincorporated areas of La Crescenta and Montrose and 6% of voters in Glendale. Richman has also announced his candidacy for mayor of a newly independent San Fernando Valley -- the election of mayor and the 14 City Council members of the new city will be on the same Nov. 5 ballot as the Valley cityhood question itself.

GLENDALE — Shakeh Bogharian, administrator of Good Day Adult Health Care Center in Glendale, shared a piece of worrisome news with her patients on Tuesday morning — the lack of a state budget means the facility can't pay its bills. The community-based health care center is funded entirely by Medi-Cal, and with state budget talks at an impasse, that fund is on hold. "It's a financial crisis," Bogharian said. Good Day hopes to continue its daily service, which includes a mix of medical, therapeutic and social care for about 250 elderly patients, but with no budget resolution in sight, services could soon be cut, she said.

It is unfortunate that groups like the Glendale Patriots (“Group protests health-care plan,” July 25) are trying to obscure what is actually in the health-care reform legislation supported by President Obama. They make unfounded charges about less choice and lower quality, and inaccurate comparisons to England’s and Canada’s health-care systems. In fact, most people would remain in the employer-provided health plans they currently are in. If they worked for a very small employer, or did not have employer-provided insurance, they would qualify to be in the health insurance exchange.