A private plane lands at a small airfield.
A team of doctors disembarks and heads to the hospital to begin treating children in a marathon day of surgeries. Their patients have been waiting months to see doctors, and the visiting physicians will perform a non-stop series of surgeries like tonsillectomies, and treating damaged ears and sinuses.
It looks like a day in the life of Doctors Without Borders, in some remote overseas location. But it is actually right in northern California, in Redding.
Community ENT — ear, nose and throat specialists — was started by a small group of doctors who are trying to fill a critical gap in the state’s healthcare system, getting basic care to patients who cannot afford private health insurance and are frustrated by the medical system.
Community ENT’s doctors work for free, and on the day California Connected filmed them, performed some 79 surgeries in a day, clearing a six months backlog of cases in just a day.
Taking out adenoids and tonsils are usually fairly simple and routine procedures, but in Shasta there are very few doctors qualified to perform them. Shasta, like many rural counties, suffers from a doctor shortage.
For Community ENT doctors and their young patients, it is a very satisfying program. But why are such measures necessary in 21st century California?
According to Ann Murphy, M.D., medical director of the Shasta Community Health Center, one reason for this scarcity of medical services is the state’s low reimbursement rates to doctors who participate in the Medi-Cal program.