Latest California Healthline Stories
New Breed of HMO Cuts Costs, Improves Quality in San Diego
A new kind of HMO with tiered provider networks and built-in incentives for members to see doctors who deliver high-quality care is helping San Diego school districts deal with rising health care costs in a weak economy.
Changing the Way Hospitals Do Business
One of the tenets of health care reform is to provide incentives to raise quality, improve outcomes and lower costs.
That idea is what’s behind about $3.3 billion in federal incentives dangled in front of public hospitals in California as part of the Medicaid waiver deal completed late last year. A new policy brief from the California Association of Public Hospitals details some of those changes.
The deal in the waiver agreement — the Delivery System Reform Incentive Program — is a pay-for-performance initiative for 21 public hospitals in California. That change in performance is measured by meeting a myriad of different milestones.
Are Legal Challenges to Reform Actually Making it Stronger?
Opponents of health reform rushed to challenge the law in court — but the flurry of anti-overhaul cases may have helped the government build its own case to defend it. Lawyers explain the Obama administration’s rare approach to the unprecedented legal battle.
Switching Programs a Complicated Task
Norman Williams would like to start with a basic premise: Adult day health care is important to the state of California.
Williams is a deputy director at the state Department of Health Care Services. “We consider this a valuable program, a real benefit for the people who use it,” Williams said.
That’s why Gov. Jerry Brown (D) allocated $25 million in transition money, Williams said, to assess the individual needs of people currently in the program and see where else they could be placed.
ADHC Lawsuit Might Proceed, Regardless
The official acronym change is from ADHC to KAFI — from the Adult Day Health Care program to Keeping Adults Free from Institutions.
The name change became official Friday with passage in the Senate of AB 96 (Bob Blumenfield, D-Woodland Hills). The bill would order the California Department of Health Care Services to file a federal waiver application for the new KAFI program “as soon as possible,” with an outside deadline of Sept. 1, 2011 — the same day the existing ADHC program is slated for elimination of its Medi-Cal benefit.
If the Assembly passes the budget as expected when it meets today, the package heads to Gov. Brown for his signature. Whether he signs it or not, senior and disability advocates plan to pursue the lawsuit filed last week against the planned elimination of Medi-Cal dollars from the current ADHC program.
HIPAA Changes Seek Balance of Compliance, Right To Know
HHS hopes proposed changes to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s privacy rules will be relatively easy for health care providers to comply with and give individuals more details about who has access to their protected health information.
Lawsuit Filed as Two More ADHC Centers Close
It will not be a good day today at the Robertson Adult Day Health Care Center in Sacramento.
“It’s our last day. It’s the day we’re locking our doors,” said Lyndsey Roush, program director at Robertson.
Robertson will be the sixth ADHC center to shut down since March, and a seventh center is expected to follow suit, with an announcement coming as soon as today.
Committees Talk Health, Move Budget
In passing the May revision out of the Assembly and Senate budget committees, a raft of legislators raised questions about the funding of health care programs, both present and future.
“This has been an arduous process, I must say,” Assembly member Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) said. “We have had to make some tough decisions — with almost half of the March actions, half of those March cuts coming out of health and human services. These are services that Californians rely on.”
The current budget revision includes more cuts to health-related programs, including the shift of 870,000 children from the Healthy Families program to Medi-Cal managed care.
Fragmented Long-Term Care System Needs Help, Report Says
Health care reform during a “time of substantial fiscal challenge and constraint in California” offers a good opportunity for the state’s long-term care system to get a much-needed makeover, according to a new report from the SCAN Foundation.
Adult Day Health Care on Track?
Adult day health care is like the Polly Purebred of the California budget process — always in calamity, always one sinister flick of the mustache away from disaster.
Well, for the moment anyway, it looks like ADHC actually might be untied and lifted off the budget train tracks.
“We’re going to focus all our attention now on the governor,” Lydia Missaelides of the California Association of Adult Day Services said. “So he understands what’s at stake here.”