Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/caloptima/)
Orange County’s health insurance plan for the elderly, poor and needy – called CalOptima – is quickly adapting services to a more remote model, in response to the spreading novel coronavirus, including allowing for three-month prescription refills and increased home services for its elderly members.
Doctors in at least one OC hospital, UC Irvine Medical Center, are ringing alarm bells of crucial supply shortages and a lack of adequate response by administrators to a local outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
It’s a 43 percent increase from two years earlier. “We have a shortage of both affordable and available housing to meet the needs of our populations,” said Susan Price, the county’s coordinator of homeless services.
CalOptima counted 10,000 of its members as homeless in Orange County. The count is 3,200 higher than the roughy 6,800 homeless people counted by the County in January.
Supervisor Andrew Do said the County isn’t looking to take over CalOptima, the health insurance plan for the poor, but he offered a spending plan, along with criticism, for the agency.
Medical field teams will treat homeless people living on the streets after a federal judge pressured CalOptima — the county insurance plan for the poor and elderly — which also last week earmarked $100 million to homeless services.
County Supervisor and CalOptima Director Andrew Do is criticizing the county health insurance agency for the poor and elderly for being too slow in implementing medical teams that will treat homeless people on the streets, just as CalOptima is being asked to appear in a federal court hearing over homeless policies next month.
Homeless people now will be visited and treated by medical teams on the streets after the CalOptima Board of Directors unanimously voted to immediately begin the program throughout Orange County.
The probe centers on Do’s involvement in contract decisions at CalOptima, the county’s health care organization for low-income and elderly people.
The former Kaiser Permanente executive played a pivotal role in the founding and development of CalOptima, the county’s health plan for low income residents. He died July 14 after a prolonged illness at the age of 82.