Access Medi-Cal LA 🧭

A free, friendly, barrier-oriented navigation guide that helps Medi-Cal (Medicaid) members across the greater Los Angeles region find the care and resources they need - fast.

Pick your health plan, tap what you need ("get a ride," "talk to a nurse," "renew my Medi-Cal"), and get the right phone number or link in plain language - in any language. Built for low-bandwidth phones, screen readers, and people who are stressed and short on time.

⚠️ Not affiliated with the State of California, DHCS, any county, or any health plan. Always confirm important details with your plan's Member Services line. In an emergency, call 911.

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Plans & areas covered (11 plans, 5 service areas)

• Los Angeles County: L.A. Care, Health Net, Molina, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Shield of California Promise, Anthem Blue Cross, and PHC California (Positive Healthcare / AIDS Healthcare Foundation - the specialty plan for people with a prior AIDS diagnosis).
• Orange County: CalOptima Health
• Inland Empire (Riverside & San Bernardino): Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)
• Ventura County: Gold Coast Health Plan
• Kern County: Kern Family Health Care
• Statewide layer that works with any plan (Medi-Cal Rx, Medi-Cal Dental, Health Care Options, the Ombudsman, 211 LA, DMH/SAPC lines, 988, and more).

What's here

AccessMedicaid/
├─ index.html ← the website (open in any browser, or deploy the repo root)
├─ css/styles.css ← professional navy + teal design system
├─ js/
│ ├─ app.js ← plans, needs, maps, translation, live web-mining, a11y
│ └─ data.js ← generated data bundle the page reads (window.AM_DATA)
├─ api/ ← Vercel serverless functions
│ ├─ live.js ← web-mining of a plan's official page
│ ├─ nearby.js ← public map POIs (OpenStreetMap/Overpass, optional Google Places)
│ ├─ innetwork.js ← in-network providers from FHIR / Health Net directories
│ ├─ geocode.js ← address → lat/lng     isochrone.js ← travel-time areas
│ └─ verify.js ← data health check (cron)   feedback.js ← member feedback inbox
├─ data/ ← the "database" (source of truth, JSON)
│ ├─ plans/<plan>.json ← one file per Medi-Cal plan (11 files)
│ ├─ fhir-endpoints.json ← per-plan FHIR Provider Directory base URL + geo mode
│ ├─ healthnet-providers.json ← Health Net in-network dataset (generated)
│ ├─ zip-centroids.json ← CA ZIP centroids (for ZIP-area pins)
│ ├─ barriers.json ← access barriers + how to get past them
│ ├─ state-resources.json ← California statewide resources (any plan)
│ ├─ meta.json ← categories + metadata
│ └─ index.json ← manifest: plans grouped by county + brand colors
├─ scripts/
│ ├─ build-data.mjs ← compiles data/ → js/data.js
│ ├─ build-healthnet.mjs ← builds the Health Net in-network dataset
│ └─ verify-data.mjs ← link/phone checker (cron)
├─ vercel.json ← hosting config + function file bundling (Vercel)
└─ README.md

The data lives as JSON in data/ (the database). The site reads a single generated bundle, js/data.js, built from those JSON files, so the static site works by simply double-clicking index.html - no server or build tools required. Because index.html is at the repo root, it deploys zero-config to Vercel / GitHub Pages / Netlify.

Key features

• Find your plan, grouped by county - pick from 11 plans across 5 service areas, or "I'm not sure / show me everything."
• Task-first needs - tap "get a ride," "talk to a nurse," "renew my Medi-Cal," etc., or search. Click-to-call numbers everywhere.
• 🔴 Live web-mining - when you choose a topic, the site calls /api/live, which fetches that plan's official page server-side and shows the latest title, phone numbers, and a snippet with a "pulled live" badge and timestamp. Degrades gracefully to the curated copy if offline or opened as a local file.
• 🗺️ Find care near you - type a ZIP (or use your location) and pick urgent care, ER, pharmacy, clinic, dentist, mental health, or your plan's doctors; an embedded Google Map updates live (no API key needed).
• 🔥 In-network providers (FHIR) - for several plans the map shows providers pulled from the plan's official provider directory (CMS interoperability / FHIR), with specialty and language filters. See In-network provider directories below.
• 🌐 Whole-page translation - a language menu (16 languages) translates the entire page via Google Translate, plus a reminder that every plan must provide a free interpreter.
• Accessibility & care-first design - always-on 911/988 safety strip, "Get help now" button, text-size controls, print/Save-as-PDF, dark-mode & reduced-motion aware, mobile-first responsive layout, 48px touch targets, semantic HTML, ARIA, ~6th-grade reading level, no tracking.

In-network provider directories (FHIR / CMS interoperability)

The "Find care near you" map can show in-network providers for several plans, pulled from each plan's official provider directory. Under the CMS Interoperability & Patient Access rule (CMS-9115-F), Medi-Cal managed care plans must publish a public, no-auth Provider Directory API in HL7 FHIR R4 (Da Vinci PDEX Plan-Net). The serverless function api/innetwork.js queries the selected plan's directory; the map falls back to public map data (Google/OpenStreetMap) when a plan has no usable endpoint. When in-network data is used the map shows a green frame, a 🔥 FHIR source badge, and green dots; otherwise neutral dots with a "not filtered by insurance" note.

A key finding about coordinates

A live probe of the FHIR servers found that most directories don't store geocoordinates - Location.position is empty for L.A. Care, CalOptima, and IEHP, so a FHIR near= (geo) search returns nothing (IEHP rejects near outright). Only Blue Shield Promise returns real coordinates. So the map uses two strategies, set per endpoint in data/fhir-endpoints.json (geo):

• near - exact coordinates from the server (Blue Shield Promise).
• postal - query by the ZIP codes within the search radius (from data/zip-centroids.json) and place pins at the ZIP centroid - approximate to the provider's ZIP area (same approach as Health Net). Used for the coordinate-less directories. coordsFor() prefers a real Location.position and falls back to the ZIP centroid.

Per-plan status

Plan	In-network source	Pin accuracy	Status
L.A. Care	FHIR R4 (Edifecs/HAPI), public no-auth	ZIP-area (no coords in directory)	✅ live
CalOptima	FHIR R4 (Edifecs/HAPI), public no-auth	ZIP-area	✅ live
IEHP	FHIR R4 (HAPI, self-hosted), public no-auth	ZIP-area (near unsupported)	✅ live
Molina	FHIR R4 (HealthEdge/Sapphire), public no-auth	ZIP-area (near returns 500)	✅ live
Blue Shield Promise	FHIR R4 (Smile CDR), public no-auth	Exact (has coordinates)	✅ live
Health Net	Public JSON directory (FHIR base URL is portal-gated)	ZIP-area	✅ live (see below)
Anthem	FHIR R4 (Elevance HealthOS)	-	⛔ needs OAuth / API-key registration
Gold Coast	FHIR R4 (Edifecs)	-	⛔ host IP-allowlisted; base URL not public
Kaiser	none (PDF directories only)	-	⛔ no Provider Directory FHIR endpoint
Kern	none confirmed (member Patient-Access API only)	-	⛔ no public Provider Directory endpoint
PHC California (Positive Healthcare / AHF)	unconfirmed	-	⛔ no public endpoint verified

Plans marked ⛔ fall back to a deep-link to the plan's official "Find a Doctor" tool + public map data. (Note: phc here is PHC California / Positive Healthcare (AIDS Healthcare Foundation) - not Partnership HealthPlan of California, whose Edifecs endpoint must not be used for this plan.)

Health Net - FHIR status (special case)

Health Net (a Centene plan) does have a CMS-mandated FHIR Provider Directory, but its base URL is gated behind the Centene developer portal login (partners.centene.com), so it can't be queried anonymously like the others. Health Net also publishes public, machine-readable per-county provider-directory JSON (no auth), so we use those:

• scripts/build-healthnet.mjs downloads Health Net's LA Medi-Cal directory JSON (~40 MB, no coordinates), flattens its heterogeneous sections, merges each provider's specialties + languages, and ZIP-centroid geocodes them into data/healthnet-providers.json (~14k provider-locations).
• api/innetwork.js serves Health Net from that committed dataset (no external call at request time). vercel.json bundles data/** with the function so the dataset deploys.
• The weekly refresh-providers job in .github/workflows/verify-data.yml re-downloads and rebuilds it; the in-network note shows a "Directory last refreshed" date.

Refresh manually:

node scripts/build-healthnet.mjs   # needs internet; aborts WITHOUT overwriting if the download fails
node scripts/build-data.mjs
git add data/healthnet-providers.json js/data.js && git commit -m "refresh Health Net directory" && git push

Filters & honesty

One unified filter ("What do you need?") covers care types (clinic, pharmacy, ER, …) and, for in-network plans, provider specialties (Pediatrics, OB-GYN, …) plus an optional preferred-language filter. Provider directories are CMS-audited at roughly 50% accuracy, so even in-network results say "call ahead to confirm," and ZIP-area pins are labeled approximate.

Check any plan's live status: …/api/innetwork?plan=<id>&lat=34.0614&lng=-118.2385&type=doctor&radius=8047&debug=1.

How it was built

Assembled by teams of research agents (Claude Team Orchestration) over two rounds - first the LA County plans, barriers, and statewide resources; then the specialty + greater-region plans (PHC, CalOptima, IEHP, Gold Coast, Kern). One agent per plan visited the official website and organized member resources into the database. Every fact carries a verified flag and source URLs; anything that couldn't be confirmed on an official site this run is marked "Please confirm."

Run it

Open index.html in a browser for the full static experience. To exercise the live web-mining endpoint locally you need the Vercel runtime:

npm i -g vercel
vercel dev # serves the site + /api/live at http://localhost:3000

Or just deploy to Vercel - the /api/live function and static site work out of the box.

Updating the data

Edit the JSON in data/, then run node scripts/build-data.mjs to regenerate js/data.js. Plan grouping and brand colors live in data/index.json. Keep phone numbers and URLs confirmed against official sites, and set verified: true only for facts you re-checked.

Keeping it updated on Vercel

The Vercel project is connected to this GitHub repo, so every push to main auto-deploys to production. The normal loop is just:

git add -A
git commit -m "your change"
git push            # Vercel builds & deploys automatically

Watch the deploy go green in Vercel - Deployments. (If the project is NOT Git-connected, deploy manually with npm i -g vercel then vercel --prod.)

1. Change wording, design, or features - edit the file(s), commit, push. Done.

2. Change a phone number / link / resource - edit the JSON in data/, then regenerate the bundle and commit it:

node scripts/build-data.mjs    # rewrites js/data.js from data/
git add -A && git commit -m "update <plan> numbers" && git push

(The site reads js/data.js, so it must be rebuilt and committed - don't edit it by hand.)

3. Make returning visitors get the update right away (PWA cache). The app installs a service worker, so repeat visitors are served from cache and pick up changes on their next visit. To push an update immediately, bump the cache name in sw.js (e.g. amla-v2 -> amla-v3) when you ship a notable change; the old cache is cleared on next load.

4. Set environment variables (optional) in Vercel - Settings - Environment Variables, then redeploy:

• FEEDBACK_WEBHOOK_URL - route member feedback to a Slack/Discord/Make inbox.
• GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY - optional. If set, the "Find care near you" search uses Google Places (higher-quality clinic data + phone numbers) instead of OpenStreetMap. Enable the Places API (New) for the key. Note: Google's Places terms generally expect results to be shown on a Google map, so enabling this is the owner's call; leaving it unset keeps the resilient, key-free OpenStreetMap/Overpass path.

5. Automatic data checks (no action needed). Crons keep the data honest:

• GitHub Action (.github/workflows/verify-data.yml) runs weekly. The verify job checks every link is reachable and every phone still appears on its page (emails you if red); the refresh-providers job re-downloads Health Net's directory and rebuilds data/healthnet-providers.json + js/data.js, committing any changes. Run either anytime from the repo's Actions tab - "Run workflow." (The 6 in-network plans that use live FHIR need no refresh - they're queried per request.)
• Vercel Cron (/api/verify in vercel.json) does a lightweight weekly sample; results appear in Vercel - Logs. Confirm it's listed under Vercel - Settings - Cron Jobs.

The crons verify the data; they don't rewrite it. When a check flags something, fix it with step 2 above.