Medical Group Won’t Seek Bankruptcy

SIMI VALLEY —  A Family Health Care Medical Group official said Tuesday the failed company no longer intends to file for bankruptcy, as executives had discussed last week, but is preparing this week to dissolve its corporate status.

It was not immediately clear what this will mean to doctors trying to recoup thousands of dollars still owed them by Family Health Care.

Company spokeswoman Mari Zag said the medical group still would need to liquidate its assets and pay creditors. She declined to provide specifics, referring questions to the group’s attorney, who did not return calls. Family Health Care remained listed as an active corporation Tuesday afternoon, according to the state Department of Corporations.

As the largest medical group in Ventura County, serving 135,000 area patients, the organization acted as a middleman between health insurance providers and hundreds of doctors. The group’s sudden closure last week followed months of financial instability and accumulation of an estimated $6 million or more in debt.

At a news conference last week, executives said they would dissolve the company and were poised to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy. But as the days passed without action, suspicion and anger swelled among the ranks of area doctors waiting to be paid.

Sabrina Simmons-Brill, a lawyer in Thousand Oaks, said she represents some doctors who did business with the company. She said her clients were angry after hearing reports that former staff doctors for Family Health Care were moving furniture and equipment from their old offices to other spaces before anyone could take an inventory of the company’s assets.

The company’s former medical director, Dr. George Dichter, said nothing was being done in secret and all company assets would be accounted for.

“Nobody’s absconding with anything . . . or hiding assets,” he said. “There’s a hope that all the equipment will be appraised and sold off.”

Any former staff doctors who want to keep Family Health Care equipment in new offices would be required to pay for it, Dichter said.