Latest California Healthline Stories
How Should Policymakers Deal With the Fattening of California?
Obesity rates in California have more than doubled since 1990, and if current trends continue, more than half of the state’s adults will be obese by 2030, according to new research. We asked legislators and policy analysts how the state should deal with the problem.
Healthy Families Falls One Vote Short — For Now
No one voted against it, but the bill to fund the Healthy Families program still failed in the Assembly.
ABX1 21 by Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills) passed a Senate vote, and could still come up for a re-vote in the Assembly today.
The current legislative session ends tomorrow.
Molly Coye of UCLA Discusses Innovative Ways To Improve the Value of Health Care Services
Molly Coye, chief innovation officer of UCLA, spoke with California Healthline about how UCLA and other health care systems are taking steps to increase the value of the health care services they deliver.
UCSF Medical Center Catches Up With EHR Deployment
UC-San Francisco Medical Center, which got a relatively late start in Bay Area hospitals’ march toward comprehensive electronic health record systems, took a major step recently by adopting a new integrated system.
Bill To Create Basic Health Program Delayed
The two biggest health care bills this year will have to wait till next year.
First it was AB 52, the bill to regulate health insurance rate hikes, that did not make it out of appropriations committee, and will wait till 2012 to be heard again. And now it’s SB 703 by Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), which would establish a Basic Health Program in California.
“It’s official now, it is a two-year bill,” according to John Ramey, executive director of Local Health Plans of California.
FTC Emerges as Another Obstacle to Health Reform Law
The Affordable Care Act pushes new efforts at health care provider integration, like accountable care organizations, that may lead to more market concentration. The Federal Trade Commission is stepping up efforts to stop provider consolidation. Which approach will win out?
Finance May Look at Continuing Costs Left by ADHC
Senate members at a budget subcommittee hearing on Friday raised the notion of involving the Department of Finance in tracking the costs involved in eliminating adult day health care as a Medi-Cal benefit.
The state is scheduled to end the ADHC benefit on Dec. 1.
The deadline was extended by the Department of Health Care Services from its original elimination date of Sept. 1. The extra three months are designed to give the department time to move roughly 36,000 ADHC patients to alternative services, and to conduct health assessments of those patients to determine exactly what those services will be.
Hard Times for Nursing Homes May Get Harder
California’s nursing homes are in a precarious state. After dealing with deep payment cuts and the likelihood that additional reductions are imminent, they face more financial problems after six leading companies were downgraded by Standard & Poor’s.
Committees Move Host of Bills, Including Rate Regulation
The Senate and Assembly appropriations committees moved fast and furiously yesterday, sending a range of health-related bills out of committee and onto the legislative floor.
That includes the most controversial item on either docket, AB 52 by Assembly members Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) and Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), which would authorize the state to regulate health insurance rates.
In other news, the state controller yesterday reiterated his strong request to the Department of Health Care Services to back off from expanding a relationship with a provider of ADHC-like services, because he says that provider owes the state $339 million. Details are further below.
DHCS Director Confirmed by Rules Committee
Yesterday’s confirmation hearing to make Toby Douglas the director of the Department of Health Care Services — a job he currently holds by appointment — may have summed up the job itself.
On one level, it was a bright moment for Douglas, with people from all areas of the health care world applauding him for his strong leadership, accessibility, cooperation and depth of knowledge. And at the same time, Douglas was grilled at length over his department’s transition plan for the roughly 35,000 beneficiaries of the adult day health care program.
Douglas was unanimously confirmed by the Senate Rules Committee on a 5-0 vote.