Consumer-oriented Web Sites

Many public and private sources provide information on consumer health care topics, such as attempting to facilitate consumers' access to services.

CalHospitalCompare - Rating Hospital Quality in California
Site sponsored by the California HealthCare Foundation that rates quality of care, patient experience, and safety measures for hospitals by location. Ratings for a single hospital, or a comparison of hospitals on care for specific conditions are available.

ConnectLA
ConnectLA is dedicated to linking underserved neighborhoods to important information and resources, incorporating community computer centers to ensure that low-income communities have access to these resources. Information is available on various health topics by age group and gender. A section allows searches for physicians, agencies and insurance agencies by service type, zip code and name. A Community Health page lists services in each SPA. It also links to a page with a Health Report Card Lookup, which contains basic information from the Children’s Planning Council such as child death rates, children with health insurance, and teen pregnancy rates broken down by SPA.

HealthyCal.org
Website combining health policy reporting with community stories that show how decisions made in the Sacramento Capitol affect the everyday health of Californians.

HealthyCity
Leverages information from the Asset Mapping Project, which is a database of community resources, and also utilizes the INFOLINE of Los Angeles database of health and human services resources. The main features of the site include a Find a Service section, a My Neighborhood feature and a Policy Map Room.

Homelessness Resource Center Web Site
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has launched a new Homelessness Resource Center Web site. Topics include Facts [about homelessness], Best Practices, Training, Events, Organizations, and Forums. It also includes information on housing and trauma and homelessness.

L.A. County Helps
L.A. County consumer information resource on public services such as child care, health services, CalWORKs, food stamps or general relief, social security information, housing, consumer protection and more. The website offers information about what services are available, where they are located, how to apply and includes a brief, anonymous, self-screening eligibility questionnaire.

Network of Care for Mental Health
Provides information about mental health services, laws and related news, as well as communication tools and other features in English, Spanish, Cantonese, Russian, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Cambodian.

Teen Health Rights
Designed by the National Center for Youth Law to help California adolescent health care providers understand the many of laws that impact their work. It includes a range of information on laws from minor consent and confidentiality to child abuse reporting and insurance regulations, as well as an "Ask an Expert" section, where questions can be submitted by e-mail.

Valley Care Community Consortium
Provides an online, searchable directory of services for providers needing to make referrals for the residents of L.A. County’s SPA 2, the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys.

There is an effort to use the internet to facilitate eligibility assessments and enrollment for services.

One-e-App
Allows Certified Application Assistors, county eligibility workers and others to screen and enroll individuals and families in programs such as Medi-Cal, Healthy Families and local health insurance expansion programs. The UniHealth Foundation supported a formal requirements analysis to evaluate One-e-App’s potential implementation in L.A. County. Planning for implementation is currently underway.

Various advocacy organizations have consumer advice for navigating the health care system.

Children's Health and Medical Programs
Includes an eligibility calculator for children and pregnant women for various public health insurance programs.

Health Care Coach
NHeLP's Health Care Coach has information ranging from health insurance to patient care.

Health Consumer Alliance
Provides brochures on topics such as Medi-Cal and how to contest a bill, and provides additional links and resource contact information.

Healthscope
A service of the Pacific Business Group on Health, Healthscope provides California health care quality ratings, with options for finding a doctor, health plan ratings, hospital ratings and medical group ratings.

People's Guide
The LA Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness has placed a People’s Guide online, which gives practical information about how to get food, money and other help from government programs and community services.