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April 22, 2010
Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot
by Barbara Diamond
Clinic as vital to Laguna now as in 1970 —
The Laguna Beach Community Clinic began with a telephone hotline for folks with medical problems and no way to pay for medical care in the hippie-happy Laguna Beach of 1970. By October of that year, volunteers opened a free clinic, fostered by the late Dr. Eugene Atherton . Eugene Atherton and bail bondsman Ron Kaufman and riling some residents who feared the free medical care would draw “undesirables” to town.
Sound familiar?
“I was skeptical about it,” said former Police Chief Neil Purcell, a sergeant at the time. “We had so many flower children and hippies — and the Brotherhood [of Eternal Love] going strong at the time, I just thought how much more are we going to do to induce people to come to town who are looking for freebies.”
However, Purcell said this week that he later came to realize the clinic provided a needed service and had become a first-class medical facility.
The clinic will be celebrating its 40th anniversary of service to the city at the annual Sunset Fiesta, a May 2 fundraiser at the Twin Points estate in North Laguna.
Support is needed now as it was when the clinic first opened its doors and its heart to the community.
The city was experiencing a virtual epidemic of hepatitis in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, due to needle exchanges and the influx of already infected folks, Purcell said. And the clinic addressed those needs.
One of the most valuable and lasting services the clinic offered was the recognition in the early 1980s that a mysterious virus that had cropped up worldwide and was devastating Laguna’s gay community must be contained, if not cured, by education and early treatment....
>Read full article in the Coastline Pilot
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April 2, 2010
The Laguna Beach Independent
By Jennifer Erickson
Survival of the Swiftest
Bending to the Shifting Needs of its Patients
 As the Laguna Beach Community Clinic turns 40 this year, it remains one of the best-kept secrets in town. To be sure, community recognition and the economic downturn are helping to change that. (Photo by Ted Reckas)
A new generation of patients is coming through the doors today: residents who typically had health insurance through their jobs have lost both as the economy faltered. Many turned to the community clinic out of desperation, surprised to find that the disreputable “free” clinic patching up indigents that they anticipated instead provided quality, family health care.
It didn’t hurt the clinic’s visibility that two of its doctors, Tom Bent and Korey Jorgensen, were named citizens of the year for the 2010 Patriot’s Day Parade either.
Originally established in 1970, the LB Free Clinic offered limited services in the early years focused on general health, STDs, pap smears and birth control. Hours were restricted to four nights a week.
Since then, the clinic’s scope of services and hours of operation have broadened. Today, it offers patients “comprehensive medical care across the lifespan with measurable outcomes that meet, or usually exceed, the outcomes in private practice,” according to Bent, the clinic’s medical director and chief operating officer since 2005, who insists that one of the greatest misconceptions about the clinic is the quality of its service....
> Read full article in the Laguna Beach Independent
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March 9, 2010
The Orange County Register
By Claudia Koerner
Laguna Beach clinic among oldest in south county
"Since opening 40 years ago, the mission of the Laguna Beach Community Clinic hasn't changed.
The clinic, then the Laguna Beach Free Clinic, aimed to offer care whether a patient could pay or not. Volunteers began seeing patients several nights a week at an office on Glenneyre Street.
"Then, as now, we had a lot of people who were artists, small business owners who didn't have access to health insurance," said Dr. Tom Bent, medical director at the clinic.
The clinic, the oldest in south Orange County and still one of the only in the area serving low-income, uninsured patients, will celebrate 40 years of caring for the community this year. Since 1970, care and services at the clinic now on Third Street have improved and expanded, though finding money to continue to serve increasing community need remains a priority.
Instead of simply treating a problem and sending patients on their way, the clinic now takes a comprehensive view of healthcare. From prenatal to geriatrics, the clinic staffs full-time family doctors as well as bringing in volunteer specialists to act as what Bent calls a patient-centered medical home...."
> Read full article in the Register
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March 6 , 2010
The Orange County Register
By Claudia Koerner
 Laguna turns out for Patriots Day —
The Laguna Beach Community Clinic was represented again this year in Laguna's annual Patriot's Day Parade. Following behind a convertible carrying Citizens of the Year — our own Dr's. Bent and Jorgensen — board members, clinic staff and two adorable poodles marched through town. They sported white coats and panama hats and waved American flags to supportive cheers and applause from the crowd. Out in front of the group, Director Barbara Hamkalo pushed a wheelchair carrying a heavily bandaged Waldo the bear. Despite the damp weather a great time was had by all.
Photo: Monica Prado and Barbara Hamkalo with Waldo (OC Register photo)
> Read about the Parade in the Orange County Register
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March 4 , 2010
Drs. Korey Jorgensen and Thomas Bent of the Laguna Beach Community Clinic were named "Citizens of the Year" and honored at the annual Patriot's Day Parade on March 6th."
Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot
No Lack of Honorees — Local heroes from all walks of life who serve their community will be cheered Saturday in Patriots Day Parade.
By Barbara Diamond
"The Patriots Day Parade Assn. had no trouble finding worthy individuals to honor at the annual March event: Indeed, the well runs deep in Laguna.
Since 1967, the parade has honored heroes that defended their country in dire times, paid homage to residents who made outstanding contributions to the community and recognized members of the younger generations who followed in their footsteps...
This year’s co-honorees Jorgensen and Bent are bound by their dedication to providing medical care at the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, which contrary to the perception of much of Laguna as a city of fat cats, is desperately needed for the less fortunate."
> Read full article in the Coastline Pilot.
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December 11, 2009
Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot
Clinic medical director honored by organization —
Dr. Tom Bent, medical director and chief operating officer for the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, was named Family Physician of the Year last week by the Orange County chapter of the California Academy of Family Physicians. Bent received an engraved cut crystal bowl by organization members.
Bent was nominated for the award for his work with the underserved and homeless, his leadership at the Community Clinic and his involvement with medical students and residents. Bent is president of the group.
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October 30 , 2009
Laguna Beach Independent
Guest Column — Dr. Pam Lawrence, M.D.
Refuting Twisted Thinking — Response by LBCC volunteer physician to Letter to the Editor:
As a volunteer physician and vice president of the board at the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, I would like to reply to the letter in the Oct. 16 Independent (“Root Cause”), addressing the homeless situation in Laguna.
It was fascinating to me that a reader (Mace Wolf) would hold the clinic responsible, along with two other organizations, as a root cause of homelessness. He writes, “I want to see all three of these organizations zoned out of town or charged appropriate taxes and fees so that these organizations are forced to internally bear the costs of their support for homelessness rather that externalizing them onto the rest of us.” He wants to apply fees and taxes to every donation, hand out, or “client encounter” within these organizations at least to an extent that they are required to “bear the full public cost of the existence of Laguna Beach’s homeless population.”
If this attitude truly reflects the thoughts of more than a handful of Laguna residents, then we in Laguna are in great need of dialogue and education among ourselves.
Speaking on behalf of the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, the perception of this organization is totally in error. It is no longer a “free” clinic. It is supported by grants, government programs (Medicare, mediCal, MSI), philanthropic dollars, fundraisers, and sliding scale patient payments. It serves the under insured and the uninsured. As far as I am aware, it remains the only Orange County clinic that will continue to address a patient’s health problem even if he/she has zero resources to pay, and the clinic has never closed its doors to new patients because of over enrollment and thin funding. Almost all of our patients have an employed family member even though their income may be well below the federal poverty guidelines.
Our fastest growing segment of patients is the middle class person who has always had medical insurance through work and a personal doctor, but who is now unemployed, uninsured because of an inability to afford COBRA payments, and now without a doctor, especially if previously a member of an HMO.
The clinic also serves many other groups without insurance – the small business owner, artists, chefs, kitchen workers, nannies, gardeners, clerks, etc. Serving as a medical home to many of the uninsured and because of an open door to “walk ins,” the LBCC saves the taxpayer thousands of dollars annually by keeping under-funded patients out of the local emergency room and as a referral center for patients without funding sent in follow up by E.R. staff after treatment.
The clinic keeps the working poor population in the work force by treating chronic disease such as high blood pressure and diabetes and achieves results far exceeding the national average regarding successful control.
Laguna Beach residents perhaps do not understand what a valuable resource they have in their town. Attention to community health benefits us all. Diagnosis and timely treatment of a patient’s communicable disease, cancers, diabetes, hypertension, etc., prenatal care, and preventive care affects not only the individual and their family but, indirectly, the entire community.
Homelessness affects many communities. It is estimated that in Orange County, there are 17,000 children living in shelters, cars, parks, motels, or with other families – a 30 percent increase over last year. There is a record number of foreclosures, and unemployment is almost at 10 percent in California.
There have been many nonprofit programs trying to address affordable housing and homelessness issues. Irvine’s Families Forward, for one, is a superb example of a community response, providing apartments for homeless families as well as the counseling required to ensure a successful return to the work place, food to assist the family budget, clothing as needed, school supplies for the children, etc. It would be a fantastic leap to believe that Families Forward somehow fueled the growing size of this unfortunate group.
Housing affordability, failing schools, juvenile crime, gang violence, child and domestic violence are all problems to be solved. To solve these problems will require collaborative and creative approaches among multiple segments of our community.
To say that the Friendship Shelter, the Resource Center, and the Laguna Beach Community Clinic are responsible for the homeless presence in Laguna is twisted thinking. To suggest that these non-profits be taxed or run out of town for trying to address some of the problems of the homeless strikes me as bizarre.
On the contrary, to truly address chronic homelessness, a strategic public policy along with counseling, mental health programs and addiction treatment centers, as well as a unified public health policy, would all contribute immensely to successful outcomes.
In the meantime, we should be proud that there are people who gather the resources they can, where they live, to try to address societal problems.
Instead of pointing fingers of blame, we should be working together to find lasting solutions.
Pamela Lawrence, MD, also known as Pamela Horowitz, is a Laguna Beach resident, LBCC board member and volunteer physician
> See the Laguna Beach Independent article
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June 4, 2009
Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot
By Ashley Breeding
Clinic is troubled by budget — Community Clinic director says if state cuts funding, no new patients will be accepted at Laguna Beach facility.
A proposal to drastically reduce state spending on medical aid for the poor means the Laguna Beach Community Clinic could be closing its doors to new patients.
Dr. Thomas Bent, medical director at the clinic, said new patient admissions will be threatened when the current clinic reserve funds run out. And this is happening when more people need the clinic due to difficult economic times.
“We need additional [aid] from the community to make up for the shortfall by the state,” he said. “Otherwise, our current programs will be threatened and we may not be able to accept any new patients.”
The mission of the clinic since its inception in 1970 is to provide medical care for all individuals in South Orange County, regardless of their ability to pay.
> Read full Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot article |
Orange County AIDS Walk 2007
"I
am proud of the work I do as a physician at the Laguna Beach
Community Clinic, and am pleased to have this recognition.
My work on the HIV Advisory Committee, a part of the local
city government, is educational in nature, and that also
garnered attention.
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