Why Finding a Doctor in Merced Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better for Most People – by Monica Velez for the MERCED SUN-STAR
Cierra Shelton suffers from hypertension and can’t find a doctor in Merced.
Frequently the 30-year-old mother of two takes only half the prescribed dose of her blood-pressure medication to make the medicine “stretch” until she can get an appointment to refill the prescription.
“I’m told to go to urgent care if symptoms are serious enough that I need to be seen during the week,” Shelton said in a recent interview.
Shelton says for people like her, who depend on Medi-Cal, preventative care in Merced County is “nonexistent.”
More than half of Merced County residents – about 51 percent – are on Medi-Cal. That’s about 127,000 people in Merced County.
But despite efforts to provide incentives to doctors to live and work in Merced County things have gotten much worse in recent months for low-income families in need of local healthcare.
Low-income healthcare provider goes bankrupt
Horisons Unlimited Health Care served thousands of patients in the Central Valley before it filed for bankruptcy and closed all eight of its clinics, including five in Merced County.
About 80 percent of Horisons patients were on Medi-Cal, according to documents filed in federal Bankruptcy Court in Fresno.
Horisons left countless patients in the dark, as they began to shut down certain services and locations, physicians left and patients were refused service.
Several patients said nobody would tell them why the clinics suddenly were gone.
The clinic in Los Banos left a note on its closed door saying the shut down was due to its “current financial condition.”
