Hundreds of the city’s underinsured are filling the Los Angeles Sports Arena this weekend to receive medical treatment from volunteer physicians. The flow of patient traffic at the CareNowLA clinic continued its steady pace Friday after drawing in more than 1,000 people Thursday.

Mobile medical trucks sat parked inside the arena, circling rows of dentist chairs and HIV testing booths. Around the bib, optometrists had set up their equipment next door to a semi-private medical treatment area. Patients met with doctors behind thin curtains, some having waited hours for brief consultations.

For most of the clinic’s patients, these short appointments are the only affordable treatment available.

“An event like this puts a face to the staggering state of healthcare in our country,” said CareNow President Don Manelli. “We are now seeing an unprecedented level of need and suffering, as long-untreated ailments become chronic conditions.”

CareNowLA organized what is being touted as the country’s largest free clinic as an expansion of its 2010 initiative in Long Beach. This year’s event called in nearly 850 healthcare providers to volunteer through Sunday. Patients pre-registered Monday to receive physical exams, mammograms, PAP smears, teeth cleanings and extractions, as well as eye exams and glasses prescriptions to be filled on-site.

Organizers predict volunteers will see 5,000 patients by the end of the four-day clinic. Those patients that undergo more significant procedures like tooth extractions will be able to seek follow-up treatment at several local medical centers.

So far, dental care has been in the highest demand. But it was the convenience of having several services taken care of at once that brought Vesta Middleton to the LA Sports Arena Friday.  

Middleton said she was covered under Medi-Cal at one point but the insurance has since run out. Her situation was by no means hopeless; she seemed content to visit the emergency room for occasional treatment, but the weekend’s clinic seemed like a better option.

As she waited for a dental check-up, Middleton sat with a friend in a row of red chairs around the outside corridor. She held a spot in the 900s; the overhead speaker system rang out, announcing a figure somewhere in the low 600s. It was going to be a long afternoon, and she still wasn’t sure if she would get both the checkup and a much-needed pair of glasses.

“You don’t want to fuss, because we need the help,” Middleton said. “So I’m just keeping my ears open.”

She had already seen a doctor on the arena’s upper level about pain related to arthritis, and had decided on her own accord as a result of the consultation she needed to lose weight. It had already been a productive day.

Not all patients were as pleased with the clinic’s offerings. Marja Hope was irate as she left the inner circle of the arena. After waiting in line for five hours during pre-registration to get a day-pass wristband, she was told Friday that if she left to go pick up her child, she would not be allowed back into the clinic.

“I think it’s very unfair for them not to let me go around the corner and come back,” she said. “We’re about to leave and miss out. I’m a little hurt by it and I don’t really know what to do.”

Hope also said there were services around the city available to cover most of the treatment she sought. But like Middleton, she had come to CareNowLA’s clinic to take advantage of a one-stop medical shop and rare access to specialized physicians — chiropractors and acupuncturists, for example.

Volunteers on the other side of the tables acknowledged there were still some kinks to work out, but Marilyn Jeffrey of Milestone Scientific said things were already running more smoothly than on opening day.

Working a table of slow-drip anesthetic machines just outside the dental services section, Jeffrey said Friday seemed to be a bit more “comfortable” for the patients.

“The flow is a lot better now,” she said. “It’s just having everyone understand where they should go. The volunteers here who have been directing patient flow have been very, very good with the patients.”

Of those underinsured patients, Jeffrey had only good things to say.

“They’ve been just wonderful. And oftentimes they’re in some severe discomfort,” she said. “But they’re just grinning and bearing it, if you will.”

As dissatisfied as she was with her own experience, Hope said she still saw the merit of the clinic.

“This should be done all over the world,” she said before leaving the arena to collect her baby. “We really do need it. We do.”

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