Access OC Programs

Surgery program

Our first program – utilizing medical volunteers and hospital donated surgical facilities to provide surgeries to the uninsured residents of Orange County has started off as a huge success. Six hospitals have joined the network – Hoag Memorial Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, Mission Hospital, Saddleback Memorial Hospital, St. Joseph Hospital of Orange, and St. Jude Medical Center. The volunteers involved with Access OC are amazing people. Many of these dedicated healthcare professionals travel internationally providing free medical care to people in need. Now, Access OC provides them with the opportunity to perform this same life-enhancing care right here at home.

Patients who were unable to work because of their medical condition are able to get back to work now that they've had a surgery which took, in some cases, less than an hour. Other patients who are working at jobs without health insurance are finally getting the surgeries they need to live pain-free lives. Our mission is to restore their health by arranging the medical care they need.

The surgery program is based on Operation Access, which has been providing free surgeries to the uninsured by mobilizing medical volunteers in the Bay area for 15 years. In 2008, Access OC's first full year, we provided approximately 300 surgical services to more than 100 patients.

Building on the success of its outpatient surgery volunteer program, which was established in 2007, Access OC is developing several innovative specialty care programs. Access OC has received grant funding to initiate two additional specialty care programs, eConsult and telemedicine, both of which use health information technology to improve care.

eConsult Program

Based on a statewide survey, community clinic physicians in Orange County stated that they were able to communicate with a specialist when they needed to less than five percent of the time. Improving primary care to specialist communication can have significant impact on access to specialty care as well as enhancing quality of care, physician satisfaction and cost-savings to the healthcare system. When physicians talk to each other, everyone benefits. eConsult will harness the efficiencies of health information technology to enhance communication between physicians. By developing an electronic messaging system, primary care physicians will be able to get the consultations they need from specialists and specialists will have an efficient mechanism for communicating with the primary care physicians. A pilot program is being designed that will develop an eConsult system. This pilot program will study the impact in cost-savings and access for the safety net population. The program is likely to result in cost savings for payers, improve physician satisfaction and improve access to care. In fact, Medicare has just begun paying for eConsults under certain circumstances. Other payers are sure to follow, as this is a concept that is timely and has broad applications.

Telemedicine

Access OC has just received its first telemedicine grant. Teledermatology will be provided at Share Ourselves Free Medical and Dental Clinic. Access OC is coordinating the development of this pilot project to introduce telemedicine to the community clinics. This will save a tremendous amount of resources at the community clinic level, including case management, referral coordination, transportation, and cost of interpreter services.

For more information

For more information, please call us at 949.553.1323.