Community clinics in Los Angeles and around the nation are expected to become one of the centerpieces of healthcare reform. The federal government has invested $11 billion and is banking on clinics’ ability to provide primary care to patients and to keep them out of expensive specialty care and emergency rooms. In some ways, the success of the health law will depend on whether the centers can meet that challenge. For several months, I embedded myself in one community health center, To Help Everyone Clinic in South Los Angeles, to watch how the clinic was preparing for reform and to gauge its successes and failures. I got to know the patients, their families and their doctors, who became recurring characters in the series. I wrote eight stories, including a narrative of one uninsured patient’s struggle to access specialty care, an article about how the center was integrating physical and mental healthcare and an overview of how clinics were marketing themselves to compete in a new era.
