Looking for a good primary care doctor who accepts Black LACare/Medi-Cal?

Question

Trying to find a doc my partner can be as comfortable as possible with. Preferably at the very least good about sending out referrals in a timely manner. Right now I'm literally going through each of the like 3000 non-pediatric PCPs on the LA Care provider search and googling each of them name by name, so I'd like to simplify that process a little if possible yaknow? We're in the AV but any reccs anywhere in the greater LA area would he helpful. Not currently picky on gender, Family Practice vs Internal, or MD vs DO considering how few there are with Medi-Cal to start. If you have a medi-cal/LACare doctor who isn't Black, but you are and you've had a good experience I'll take those reccs too. If this isn't allowed my apologies I will delete. Thanks for your time!

ethankim · Answer

If you're willing to drive down the 14, consider Northeast Valley Health Corporation in San Fernando or Pacoima. They're an FQHC so Medi-Cal is their whole thing and they staff a lot of bilingual and Black providers across their sites. The referral pipeline runs through their own case management, which cuts out the usual black hole where a private office sits on a fax for three weeks. For the AV specifically, the drive is annoying but the tradeoff is you're not cold calling 3000 names.

emmi · Answer

the av is rough for lacare pcp options tbh, most of the good ones are clustered around kaiser or cedars and dont take medi-cal. one thing that helped me was calling lacare directly at their member services line and asking them to filter for pcp panels that were actually open, bc the online search shows docs who arent even accepting new patients. also check antelope valley community clinic on ave k, theyre fqhc so they take medi-cal & have case managers who chase referrals for u when things stall. not glamorous but the referral follow through is better than most private offices ive dealt with

gabrieleamend · Answer

Antelope Valley has a couple of FQHC options people sleep on. Northeast Valley Health Corp is solid but there's also Bartz-Altadonna in Lancaster on 40th St W, they take straight Medi-Cal and the wait for a new patient appt is usually under two weeks, which is rare out there. Referrals still move slow sometimes but they assign you a care coordinator who actually answers the phone, so you're not stuck faxing into the void like at a lot of private offices. My partner's been going there two years and the only real complaint is parking.

birgitt · Answer

honestly the fastest filter ive found is the LA Care "Find a Doctor" tool but you have to uncheck the "accepting new patients" box and then cross reference with the DHCS Medi-Cal provider directory, bc the two databases dont sync and LA Care's list is stale by months. took me like 20 min for my mom vs days of googling.

also if your partner is willing to do telehealth for the intake, a lot of the bigger groups like Optum and AltaMed do video new patient visits now and you can request a Black provider in the notes. AltaMed has a location in Panorama City off Van Nuys Blvd which is a haul from the AV but way closer than central LA, and their referral desk is in house.

one more thing, ask specifically if the doc is a "paneled" PCP vs just contracted, that distinction is why half those 3000 names ghost you when u call

lucie · Answer

One thing worth knowing about LA Care specifically is that they run several different Medi-Cal plans under one umbrella, and the PCP network is not the same across all of them. If your partner is on LA Care's regular Medi-Cal, that's one panel, but if they got auto-assigned into a delegated group like a community health plan or an IPA, the in-network list is completely different and often much smaller. Call member services and ask which delegated group your partner is assigned to before you keep googling, because you might be searching the wrong list entirely.

For the AV, I'd second looking at Tarzana or Northridge over driving all the way into central LA. Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana has some Medi-Cal contracted PCPs and the referral turnaround there tends to be a few days rather than weeks, mostly because they have an in-house specialist network so they're not farming everything out. Worth a call to their physician referral line to ask who's taking new Medi-Cal patients right now.

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