A triennial study on health care in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys indicates that while the number of uninsured is dropping, the number of households in poverty is rising, contributing to the amount of residents here who have difficulty accessing health care. The Valley Care Community Consortium released the study “Assessing the Community’s Needs: A Triennial Report on the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys 2007” July 25 at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys. Ronald Sorenson, director of the Center for Community Health Improvement, oversaw the project. He didn’t anticipate finding that poverty is spreading in valley households. “One of the things that surprised us when we looked at income data is that households earning less than $25,000 a year actually increased from the last time we did the assessment,” Sorenson said. “Here in the San Fernando Valley it went back in 2003 from 17.4 percent up to 23.2 percent for this assessment in 2005. That’s quite a bump up if you think about it.” During the same period, the number of Santa Clarita Valley households in poverty also increased, only not as drastically. In 2003, 8.7 percent of households there earned less than $25,000 annually. In 2005, the number had increased to 10.8 percent. Sorenson is not sure what’s responsible for the increase of low-income households. “That’s something we need to do exploration around,” he said. “Some people may have lost their jobs or moved into lower paying jobs.” But migration could also be to blame. “Are lower skilled people moving into the area, and, if so, are they typically in lower paying jobs?” he asked. “It could be a lot of factors.” Getting care What’s for sure is that low-income residents frequently have difficulty obtaining health care. According to the assessment, 24 percent of residents said that they had not visited a dentist in the past year because they could not afford it. Moreover, 30 percent of respondents said that accessing medical care was difficult, and 20 percent said that they lacked a regular source of medical care. “If people don’t have access to a primary care physician, they have to use the emergency room for services,” Valley Care Community Consortium program director Joni Novosel said. “It’s more expensive to treat people in the emergency room than it is to spend money on disease management and prevention and education.” Heart disease and cancer, particularly breast cancer and prostate cancer, are plausibly the diseases valley residents need to be educated on the most. They are the leading causes of death here. Meanwhile, obesity, diabetes and asthma are the chronic diseases the consortium has identified as key priorities. Because mental health is the second leading reason valley residents are admitted into hospitals, it is a priority as well. As for hospitals, the consortium found that they have made strides with regards to emergency room diversions. By increasing their number of beds and improving treatment room processes, “the emergency room diversion rate is going down, falling from 32.5 percent in 2003 to 16 percent in 2005,” Novosel said. One reason valley residents who are not gravely ill might visit an emergency room is because they are too transient to have connected with a local medical provider. The highly mobile are more likely to reside in the San Fernando Valley than in the Santa Clarita Valley. In the former, 51 percent of occupied households are owned versus 75 percent in the latter. “This could signify people moving in and out of the community and maybe not being able to establish relationships with a medical provider,” Sorenson said. An area in which the Santa Clarita Valley is arguably at a disadvantage is that the population of residents between the ages of 65 and 84 there is expected to increase by 37 percent. “That definitely has an impact on the types of services that are going to be needed for long term care durable medical equipment and things associated with aging.” Novosel said. “Another impact fiscally is that the numbers of people on Medicare will be increasing, and, yet, the population we need to support the Medicare program is decreasing. That makes a big impact on Medicare dollars. There’s a possibility that co-pays and deductibles will continue to rise for that portion of the population.” A POORER VALLEY – 647,423 households in the San Fernando Valley and 76,552 in the Santa Clarita Valley in 2005 – About 21.82 percent of these combined households reported annual incomes below $25,000. – In the San Fernando Valley, there were 23.18 percent of such households. In the Santa Clarita Valley, there were 10.76 percent of such households. – In the San Fernando Valley, the bulk of these households were in Van Nuys, Glendale and North Hollywood. – In the Santa Clarita Valley, the bulk of these households were in Newhall and Canyon Country. – Based on 2005 data, it is estimated that there are 53,700 families living below the poverty level in the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys. – Approximately 19.5 percent of the population in this area relied on some form of public assistance through Cal WORKS, General Relief, C.A.P.I., M.A.O., I.H.S.S. and food stamps, according to 2005 data.
