Medical center uses high-tech solution to L.A. doctor shortage

LOS ANGELES - The county's first ''telemedicine'' pediatric center opened Friday in South Central Los Angeles as a high-tech solution to a doctor shortage.

Statewide, 18 percent of minor children are uninsured, according to the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research.

The highest percentage of uninsured children, 32 percent, is in South Central Los Angeles, which is also home to some of the county's poorest residents. Health care problems there have been compounded since the 1990s, when two-thirds of the county's medical clinics shut down.

Mary Henry Telemedicine Center is the latest clinic to be opened as part of a joint effort by the county and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine to offer medical care to children in financially downtrodden areas.

The clinic, open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, will be staffed by a physician's assistant or resident medical student to do initial examinations of children. Young patients who need immediate care will be taken to King-Drew Medical Center nearby.

If a specialist's care is required, the assistant can teleconference and show patients' injuries to a doctor in another part of town via video camera hooked up to a computer. It is hoped the technology will cut down on time spent waiting.

''Instead of taking the bus, patients can walk down the block to the clinic. Instead of a patient coming to me, I can come to the patient,'' said Charles Flowers, an eye surgeon, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Charles Drew and director of the county's telemedicine program.

In 1995, the federal government gave grants to start telemedicine clinics in rural communities but Flowers figured they would work just as well in urban areas. The first one, dedicated to eye care, opened in Long Beach in 1996.

The telemedicine program has received half a dozen grants, including $800,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and $500,000 from the non-profit California Telehealth and Telemedicine Center in Sacramento. Los Angeles County has spent $1.6 million since 1996.

The most common matters doctors expect to deal with at Mary Henry Clinic are asthma, screening for lead poisoning and nutritional deficiencies.

Xylina Bean, with the Department of Pediatrics at King-Drew Medical Center, said she also hopes to offer immunizations. About 70 percent of the area's children aren't immunized by time they are 2 years old, she said.