Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the appropriate departments to report back on potential incentives and strategies to expand access to quality urgent care in neighborhoods with limited access to an acute care facility in Long Beach.
Thank you very much. Okay. Next, we're going to move to item 21:00, please. Regarding item 20, report is communications from Councilmember Richardson, Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilwoman Mango and Council Member Oranga recommendation to require city manager to report back on potential incentives and strategies to to expand access to quality urgent care in neighborhoods with limited access to an acute care facility in Long Beach. Thank you. Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So this request is pretty simple. It's to explore incentives to increase access to acute or urgent care facilities in our community. So 40% of patients who visit hospital emergency rooms have lower level emergencies, resulting in overcrowding expand extensive wait times often, often encountered in our emergency rooms. Urgent care centers provide rapid secondary intervention for non-life threatening injuries and ailments. Urgent care facilities offer intervention for low, lower acuity patients such as allergic reactions, nausea, wounds, lacerations, sprains and so forth. They are affordable. They often offer a minimal hours of operation, often have shorter wait times, making them a convenient alternative for medical attention. And looking at the map that's on the screen that was prepared by our. It shows sort of the crosses are the urgent care facilities already exist in our city or around our city and the ages of hospitals. So we actually have a lot of you know, we have a lot of urgent care facilities and hospitals in Long Beach. But what it shows here, where those red circles are, is, you know, where we don't have sort of immediate access to urgent care facilities, kind of really clustered in four key areas of town. So so north Long Beach. So the eighth and ninth Council District, the seventh and the first on the west side, much of the fifth District, and then sort of down between two and three those areas. So urgent care facilities a lot of times like to locate right next to a hospital so they can direct somebody right across the street. You don't want to wait. You can go across streets, urgent care. So sometimes, you know, it may so we may need to take a look at other strategies or other incentives to get them to locate maybe in some of these other areas. I mean, there are a lot closer. And the idea is simply if it's within walking distance or short drive or a bus ride, maybe folks won't immediately go to the emergency room. So so we just want to make sure that we're we're taking a look at some strategies as we look at, you know, the different development opportunities in these areas, the different land use and zoning opportunities in these areas that we figure out how to intentionally pursue some of these uses in some of these areas. So that's that's the proposal here. And we have a great opportunity here. Thanks a. Lot. Thank you. Councilman Guzman ends up. Yes. I think this is timely, especially after our discussion about community hospital. And I just think, Councilmember Richardson, for bringing this forward and providing more light on access to health care, which I think is the overarching idea. So thank you very much. And I look forward to this. Yes, thank you. Councilman. Yes. I want to thank Councilmember Richardson for bringing this forward. There was a lot of this conversation with Community Hospital as Councilmember Gonzalez brought up. And I always have felt like community hospital was such a second district's resource. And and through the whole process, it really talked about that. But recognizing that really we only have services in our downtown for Second District residents, that is close. One of the other conversations that we've talked with our health department about was the need for other venues of mental health support outside of a hospital and outside of psychiatric . So just as we're coming back, I would love to to understand some of the mental health support systems that are resources that might also be in play when we think about acute care. So thank you so much for bringing this forward. Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? My name is and I can say success for president. I think it's a great way to, you know, bring access to more urgent care facilities here in Long Beach would include, you know, maybe purchasing back Pacific Hospital from the current nursing college that runs it. That was an urgent care facility that bordered that was in the the sixth District in the Wrigley neighborhood, that border, the 7/7 District, which a lot of it would cut significantly. A lot of the travel time. That ambulance is coming from the west side of Long Beach where most likely they're going into St Mary's or to Memorial . It would cut significantly the workload also, you know, just a more investigation into the practices of a lot of the ambulances and ambulance companies in Long Beach. A lot of them push out patients into Norwalk, specifically into Downey. And that also works into putting a lot of patients into life threatening situations because of the financial incentives of pushing out Medicaid and Medicare and Medicare clients out of the city. Just a thought. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. You know, public comment on this now. It was a pretty scratchy vote. Council member Mango Vice Mayor Andrews motion and. Thank you. Next, we move into item 21, please, with the item.