Latest California Healthline Stories
Earl Ferguson of the Southern Sierra Telehealth Network on Using Technology To Improve Care
Earl Ferguson, director of the Southern Sierra Telehealth Network, spoke with California Healthline about how telemedicine tools can help people in rural areas obtain access to primary care providers and specialists.
California Hospitals Begin Submitting Reports on Compliance With Seismic Safety Standards
Paul Coleman of OSHPD, Roger Richter of the California Hospital Association and former RAND researcher Charles Meade spoke with California Healthline about hospitals’ efforts to meet state earthquake safety standards.
Urgent Care Clinics Arrive With Mixed Reviews in San Diego
The country’s only national urgent care franchise, Doctors Express, opened its first California-based center in San Diego this fall, with a second on its way in early 2011. Not everyone is convinced the new centers will provide much-needed relief to local emergency departments.
Should Hospital Charges Be More Transparent?
A couple of recent efforts to increase pricing transparency in California hospitals have stalled. We asked stakeholders whether the public should have more access to hospital prices.
Inland Empire Hospitals Get Creative To Cope With Busy EDs
Hospitals in the Inland Empire are experimenting with creative techniques aimed at decreasing wait times in busy and sometimes crowded emergency departments. Online check-in systems and text messaging services are a couple of the newest tools.
Senate Probes Reasons for Adverse Hospital Events
They are events that leave patients worse off than when they first come to the hospital — from “never events” such as leaving surgical devices in a patient after an operation, to the acquisition of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a highly resistant bacterial infection.
“I believe that the DPH (California’s Department of Public Health) has not been actively pursuing the reporting of adverse events within the five days required by statute,” Senate member Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara) said. “Now, I don’t know if we’re talking fines or not, but I do know the system is not working.”
Alquist is chair of the Senate panel that convened yesterday and gathered representatives from state health agencies, hospital associations and patient advocate groups to discuss reporting and preventing adverse events in California hospitals.
Trying To Beat Denials Before They Happen
Railing against the health insurance fates is just not Jayne Kroner’s style.
Kroner, VP of business development at the Cirius Group, a California health care financial consulting firm, said she’d rather deal with the reality of insurance denials.
“If you have the right mindset to know it’s a fact of life, it becomes like a wellness program for your hospital and physician claims,” Kroner said. “You want to prevent denials.”
ED Crunch Not Necessarily Medicaid, Uninsured Issue
A study released yesterday by UC San Francisco showed a 23% increase in the number of people visiting U.S. hospital emergency departments over the past decade. Those numbers match a CDC report that came out a week ago.
The commonly held view is that rising numbers of uninsured patients and declining Medicaid reimbursements account for the spike in emergency room visits.
Not so fast, Angela Gardner of the American College of Emergency Physicians said.
Law Takes Aim at Crowded Emergency Departments
California’s emergency departments are packed. As the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured across the state have grown, and their health problems have tended to fester and grow more acute, patients have been heading to emergency rooms in record numbers.
That means wait times have become much longer in emergency departments, and patient care is more likely to be compromised under the crush of increased demand.
A bill to address that problem — AB 2153 by Assembly member Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) — is one Senate floor vote away from going to the governor’s desk.
Quality Index Points Out Where California Lags
California provides poor quality health care in several categories such as respiratory care and immunization rates, according to a just-released national evaluation, which compares health quality markers from state to state.
California had high scores in home health care and maternal care. Overall, the state rating was smack in the middle of the average range.
“We are mandated to do national reports on health care quality,” spokesperson Karen Migdail of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) said. “Given the local nature of health care, states wanted to know what’s particular for their area. This provides a good snapshot of health care quality in a particular state.”