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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Camille Levee

At a time of enormous change and uncertainty for the health care industry, the San Fernando Valley region is home to many who are embracing the challenges boldly with new ideas and fresh vision. The 10 innovators profiled in the following pages are emblematic of the important work performed by health care workers every day. They are working to improve care and lower costs — and answer the urgent need for a better health care system. If you’re the child of financially-challenged parents, or parents with limited or no health insurance, chances are you’ll have to sit at a crowded clinic and wait hours to be seen by a doctor. Not if you’re one of Camille Levee’s kids. Levee’s kids get appointments with doctors, dentists and orthodontists who see these kids pro bono in their offices, just like kids with generous health insurance or parents with money. Levee is the dynamo behind Glendale Healthy Kids, now in its 18th year of providing free health care and education to underprivileged children. While others might be thinking about retirement at her age, Levee is just getting started. Since joining Glendale Healthy Kids five years ago, she has expanded the reach of this program beyond Glendale and throughout much of the San Fernando Valley, into Burbank, Sunland, Tujunga, La Cañada, Eagle Rock and Atwater Village. From serving just 200 kids before she took over, the program now helps upwards of 800. Government, bureaucracy, forms and red tape have nothing to do with it. The program was born of the notion that people in the community should help the poor. Three hospitals — Glendale Adventist Medical Center, Glendale Memorial Hospital and Verdugo Hills Hospital — the Glendale Unified School District and the City of Glendale came together 18 years ago to create the nonprofit. The idea was to help underpriviledged children, or those with little or no health insurance, gain access good medical care. “Just the idea that there was a way for the community to come together and meet the needs of their local community was very innovative at the time,” said Levee. “We do it without any government funding, without red tape. “We have simple intake forms. We believe in talking to people as opposed to giving them a clipboard and saying, ‘Fill this out.’” GHK does this with a budget of under $500,000. About 78 percent of that budget is used for program expenses, not salaries; it operates with a staff of four. Working out of space donated by the Glendale Unified School District, Levee and her staff take calls from parents, teachers, and often the kids themselves. They schedule appointments, make follow-up calls and plan educational programs to teach children about everything from the importance of a healthy diet to brushing their teeth and taking asthma medications properly. Their education programs, which include an annual fair where children can get screened for scoliosis, myopia, tooth decay and a variety of other potential health risks, reach some 5,000 children and parents. GHK added a new teen program a few years ago that takes the program into area high schools. The core of GHK remains area doctors, who donate their services free of charge — a value of roughly $200,000 to $400,000 a year, according to Levee, which they then get to deduct on their taxes. GHK works with roughly 250 doctors, dentists and orthodontists in the Valley area. That’s not all. Years ago GHK instituted electronic medical records for those in its program, putting the program ahead of many area doctors and hospitals. And GHK says it’s able to keep the cost of caring for these children fairly reasonable because they can track how the children do, who they see, and what other chronic health problems they may have. “We are, in effect, the medical home for many of the children,” Levee said. “That is why we call ourselves a virtual clinic. We do everything a clinic does, but we send the work out.” By managing the care of the children in their charge, GHK is able to keep many of them out of expensive emergency rooms. Levee says in the past year, GHK has kept 35 kids out of the ER at a savings of $210,000, if one considers the average cost of an ER visit at roughly $6,000. The program does this partly by being responsive. Levee is an early riser who wakes at 3:30 a.m. most mornings, so in the wee hours she often picks up the call from a parent or a child in need. “I picked up the phone one morning,” she recalls, “and I thought it was my assistant because we are both early risers. So I said, ‘Hey, how are you?’ And the person on the other end said ‘Terrible.’ “She had been up all night with her child who had a terrible rash and a bad soar throat. She had no insurance and her credit cards were maxed out. I did the intake right there and then and we got the child in to see a doctor right away.”

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