Riverside County: Worst record in the state of California on Medicaid

Monday, November 1, 2010

By JOHN GONZALES
Center For Health Reporting and
LORA HINES
The Press-Enterprise

Pregnant and diagnosed with thyroid cancer, Karina Hernandez went to a Riverside County social services office late last summer desperate for medical care.

Then she waited.

Despite placing dozens of phone calls to speed up her case, the 27-year-old Lake Elsinore area resident would not get approval for her Medi-Cal application for two months -- or two weeks past the 45-day federal deadline for processing applications.

"You do everything they ask you to do, and still it's not enough," said Hernandez, who added a handwritten letter to her lobbying effort as the deadline passed. "Sometimes, literally, I think they wish I would get sick enough and die."

No county in the state has a worse record than Riverside County when it comes to processing Medi-Cal claims on time.

County workers failed to meet deadlines for processing new applications in 30.8 percent of the cases according to a key audit this summer. That's three times the maximum allowed by the state. The county's record on disabled applicants was far worse.


Read more: Riverside County: Worst record in state on Medi-Cal | News for Inland Southern California