MODESTO BEE
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

By KEN CARLSON
BEE STAFF WRITER

Last Updated: October 21, 2005, 04:29:01 AM PDT

Officials with Doctors Medical Center of Modesto said Thursday they are considering ways to hold Stanislaus County to its obligation of providing clinical services for the poor.
Twice this year, the hospital's owner, Tenet Health Corp., has claimed the county's plan to scale back health services for low-income residents violates its 1997 contract.

The contract, which runs through 2017, requires the 398-bed hospital to provide inpatient and emergency services to the county's indigent patients. The county is obligated to maintain health clinics for low-income residents.

The rift is over the Board of Supervisors' decision Tuesday to cut patient volumes by 20 percent and close the health services complex on Scenic Drive in Modesto. The cuts are intended to slash an $8.8 million Health Services Agency deficit.

At Tuesday's hearing, DMC's chief financial of-ficer, Mike King, and emergency room physician Robert Donovan said the cutbacks would cause more people to seek care in the hospital's emergency department, which they say is stressed to the limit.

King charged that the county is not fulfilling the requirement to maintain clinics providing the same level of preventive and urgent care as in 1997. The county's contract with Tenet was part of a deal that closed Stanislaus Medical Center that year.

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