Ross-Loos Medical Group

Last updated March 03, 2019

Ross-Loos Medical Group was a comprehensive prepaid health services plan with 29 medical offices throughout Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties in California and a large multi-specialty hospital located on Temple Street, Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, is the most populous county in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of the U.S. state of California and is the most populous county in the United States, with more than 10 million inhabitants as of 2017. As such, it is the largest non-state level government entity in the United States. Its population is larger than that of 41 individual U.S. states. It is the third-largest metropolitan economy in the world, with a Nominal GDP of over $700 billion—larger than the GDPs of Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Norway, and Taiwan. It has 88 incorporated cities and many unincorporated areas and, at 4,083 square miles (10,570 km²), it is larger than the combined areas of Delaware and Rhode Island. The county is home to more than one-quarter of California residents and is one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the U.S. Its county seat, Los Angeles, is also California's most populous city with about 4 million people.

Orange County is a county in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 3,010,232, making it the third-most populous county in California, the sixth-most populous in the United States, and more populous than 21 U.S. states. Its county seat is Santa Ana. It is the second most densely populated county in the state, behind San Francisco County. The county's four largest cities by population, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Irvine, and Huntington Beach, each have a population exceeding 200,000. Several of Orange County's cities are on the Pacific Ocean western coast, including Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, and San Clemente.

San Bernardino County, officially the County of San Bernardino, is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is located within the Greater Los Angeles area. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the population was 2,035,210, making it the fifth-most populous county in California, and the 12th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is San Bernardino.

Founding

Ross-Loos was established in 1929 by two physicians, Donald E. Ross^[1] and H. Clifford Loos, older brother of writer Anita Loos. The plan consisted of monthly payments which assured benefits of medical and hospital care to over two thousand employees of Los Angeles County and the Department of Water and Power and their families.

A physician, medical practitioner, medical doctor, or simply doctor is a professional who practises medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining, or restoring health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental impairments. Physicians may focus their practice on certain disease categories, types of patients and methods of treatment—known as specialities—or they may assume responsibility for the provision of continuing and comprehensive medical care to individuals, families, and communities—known as general practice. Medical practice properly requires both a detailed knowledge of the academic disciplines underlying diseases and their treatment—the science of medicine—and also a decent competence in its applied practice—the art or craft of medicine.

Corinne Anita Loos was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She wrote film scripts from 1912, and became arguably the first-ever staff scriptwriter, when D.W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She went on to write many of the Douglas Fairbanks films, as well as the stage adaptation of Colette’s Gigi.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States, serving over four million residents. It was founded in 1902 to supply water to residents and businesses in Los Angeles and surrounding communities. In 1917, it started to deliver electricity. It has been involved in a number of controversies and media portrayals over the years, including the 1928 St. Francis Dam failure and the books Water and Power and Cadillac Desert.

The founders believed that health care could be improved by combining prepayment of services, eliminating the financial barriers faced by patients at the time of needed care, with the sharing of medical records and the ease of consultation in a medical group. The focus was on the improvement of medical care quality, rather than financial success, and many concepts in those plans built on a public health approach that encouraged prevention. The plans included prenatal care, well-baby visits, and immunizations in standard benefit packages, with small or zero copayments, at a time that even the hospital costs of maternity stays were often excluded from traditional insurance.

Health care Prevention of disease and promotion of wellbeing

Health care or healthcare is the maintenance or improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in human beings. Health care is delivered by health professionals in allied health fields. Physicians and physician associates are a part of these health professionals. Dentistry, midwifery, nursing, medicine, optometry, audiology, pharmacy, psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy and other health professions are all part of health care. It includes work done in providing primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care, as well as in public health.

A patient is any recipient of health care services. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, psychologist, dentist, veterinarian, or other health care provider.

Prenatal care, also known as antenatal care, is a type of preventive healthcare. Its goal is to provide regular check-ups that allow doctors or midwives to treat and prevent potential health problems throughout the course of the pregnancy and to promote healthy lifestyles that benefit both mother and child. During check-ups, pregnant women receive medical information over maternal physiological changes in pregnancy, biological changes, and prenatal nutrition including prenatal vitamins. Recommendations on management and healthy lifestyle changes are also made during regular check-ups. The availability of routine prenatal care, including prenatal screening and diagnosis, has played a part in reducing the frequency of maternal death, miscarriages, birth defects, low birth weight, neonatal infections and other preventable health problems.

Thus, Ross-Loos Medical Group was the first "health maintenance organization" (HMO) in the United States, a term that came into being in the 1970s.

In the United States, a health maintenance organization (HMO) is a medical insurance group that provides health services for a fixed annual fee. It is an organization that provides or arranges managed care for health insurance, self-funded health care benefit plans, individuals, and other entities, acting as a liaison with health care providers on a prepaid basis. The Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 required employers with 25 or more employees to offer federally certified HMO options if the employer offers traditional healthcare options. Unlike traditional indemnity insurance, an HMO covers care rendered by those doctors and other professionals who have agreed by contract to treat patients in accordance with the HMO's guidelines and restrictions in exchange for a steady stream of customers. HMOs cover emergency care regardless of the health care provider's contracted status.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

Over several years many other employee groups, mostly governmental, joined the plan. Ross-Loos was so successful that the first small medical office on Grand Avenue in Los Angeles expanded into an enormous organization with 19 medical offices and a large multi-specialty hospital, on Temple Street, Los Angeles, in 1979.

Purchases

In 1980, Ross-Loos Medical Group was purchased by the Insurance Company of North America (INA) HealthPlan (see HMO International and California Medical Group and merged into its medical office operations which created over twenty-nine medical office locations throughout southern California. Its new name was "INA and Ross-Loos HealthPlans". This new operational name was in existence a short time until 1982; through a merger of the Insurance Company of North America (INA) and Connecticut General (CG) their names changed to become CIGNA. Ross-Loos Medical Group, then became known as CIGNA HealthPlans of California and was merged into the large CIGNA Employee Benefits Division. In 1997 CIGNA made a decision to divest itself of its "owned delivery system" or "staff model" (see HMO – staff model) and sold their operations to MedPartners. The sale to MedPartners also caused a new name change of the CIGNA "owned delivery system" in Southern California, The system became merged into the recent purchase in Southern California by Medpartners of the Friendly Hills Medical Group. In 1999, MedPartners was placed in receivership for its inability to manage the combined operations of its Southern California subsidiaries Friendly Hills Medical Group, Talbert Medical Group, Mullikan Medical Group, Vineyard Medical Group, and Riverside Medical Clinic. Those MedPartners-owned facilities were divested and sold to physician-owned delivery systems or closed.

Insurance Company of North America (INA) is the oldest stock insurance company in the United States, founded in Philadelphia in 1792. It was one of the largest American insurance companies of the 19th and 20th centuries before merging with Connecticut General Life to form CIGNA in 1982, and was acquired by global insurer ACE Limited in 1999.

Southern California Place in California, United States

Southern California is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises California's southernmost counties, and is the second most populous urban agglomeration in the United States. The region is traditionally described as eight counties, based on demographics and economic ties: Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Ventura. The more extensive 10-county definition, which includes Kern and San Luis Obispo counties, is also used and is based on historical political divisions.

The MedPartners name was changed to Caremark Rx, the Talbert Medical Group was sold to the physicians of the Talbert Medical Group; the Riverside Medical Clinic was sold back to the member physicians, remaining in operation, with over 130 physicians; and the Mullikan and Vineyard Medical Groups were eventually closed. The Friendly Hills Medical Group was acquired by KPC Global Care, now in Chadhuri Medical Group, and briefly continued operations until it too was placed into receivership by the California Department of Corporations in 1999 and closed down. The original Ross-Loos Medical Group facilities were closed and Medical Center – Hospital on Temple Street in Los Angeles was sold to The Queen of Angels Hospital.

The California Department of Corporations (DOC) was a department within the former California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency in California. The chief officer of the Department was the Commissioner of Corporations. Effective July 1, 2013, the Department of Corporations and the Department of Financial Institutions became divisions of the California Department of Business Oversight (DBO) pursuant to the Governor's Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 2012.

The original Ross-Loos Medical Group, medical offices and hospital ended with that sale in 1999 some 70 years after its beginning.

Current status

The names "Ross-Loos", "Ross Loos Medical Group", and "Ross Loos HealthPlans" are still owned by CIGNA Corporation and remain registered with the state of California Department of Corporations, Department of Insurance, and Department of Managed Care.

A street in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles bears the name Ross Loos. The road leads to the Silver Lake Medical Center.

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References

↑ "Dr. Donald Ross, Pioneer In Prepaid Health Care". Washington Post. 1981-06-18. Retrieved 2017-07-11.

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[washington_post-1] "Dr. Donald Ross, Pioneer In Prepaid Health Care". Washington Post. 1981-06-18. Retrieved 2017-07-11.