Latest California Healthline Stories
‘Baby Cams’ Link Parents, Newborns in Intensive Care
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital is one of the first in Northern California to use new technology to link parents with their newborns in the intensive care unit when they can’t be there to hold them in person.
Study Out Next Week on Continuous Coverage
In a study to be released Thursday, a UCLA researcher drew some interesting conclusions about the impact of California’s 12-month continuous Medicaid eligibility policy on continuity of care.
Shana Lavarreda, Director of Health Insurance Studies at UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research, just completed a study funded by SHARE (the State Health Access Reform Evaluation, a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). It tracked where children received care in 2000 and 2001, to measure the effect of the continuous care policy implemented in 2000.
First, she said, one finding really surprised her: “One big finding was that there were still half a million children in California who had discontinuous coverage,” Lavarreda said. “With the huge surge in coverage [after the continuous coverage policy went into effect], we thought children would be covered and remain covered — but you still had kids that were on and off the program.”
Policy Brief Tackles Waiver Policy
A policy brief issued this week summarizes the many facets and programs of the recent federal Medicaid waiver agreement — including one program that few people know about, and which could have a profound effect on public hospitals in California.
“It’s a very exciting and critical element of the waiver,” according to Melissa Stafford Jones, president and CEO of the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems.
“It embodies the principles of health care reform into a system that’s smarter and provides more coordinated care,” Stafford Jones said. “It really puts California at the leading edge of that national effort.”
California Up for Big Federal IT Grant for Exchange
The feds want to give a bushelful of health care grant dollars to California, and state officials definitely want to accept. The question is, can they meet the Dec. 23 application deadline?
A Time of Adversity and Opportunity
It’s an unusual time to be Secretary of all things health care in California.
On the one hand, Diana Dooley will take over the Department of Health and Human Services at a time when budget cuts have already worn the public safety net down to spider-web thinness.
And she arrives with a new budget deficit looming that could gut many existing health care and service programs. In fact, outgoing Governor Schwarzenegger asked lawmakers to cut more than $1 billion from Medi-Cal and the Healthy Families programs, and to eliminate the $1.4 billion CalWORKS program altogether.
Rationalizing Rationing in Arizona’s Medicaid Program
Both parties have debated whether the federal health reform law would lead to rationing. After Arizona’s unprecedented cuts to its Medicaid program, new questions have emerged about the difficult trade-offs around health care spending.
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.
Proposal Sends Shiver Through Health Agencies
The budget proposed by the governor yesterday, which includes deep cuts to health care programs in California, is unlikely to be passed in its current form, political experts said.
Legislators have made it clear that they most likely will wait for incoming Governor Jerry Brown to take office in January before taking on the latest budget shortfall. And legislative leaders have expressed support for health and human service programs: from contributing an amicus brief last week to a lawsuit that would reverse cuts in mental health programs, to lobbying for repeal of Schwarzenegger’s line-item vetoes last month of many human services programs.
But whether or not any of the proposed budget cuts happen, the latest budget reduction plan is a huge red flag to health care advocates.
Governor Transition Might Hinder Grant
The new governor takes office on Jan. 3 — but that would be too late for California to apply for a large federal innovation grant, according to a number of health care advocate groups.
“We’re in this lull period,” Lucien Wulsin of the Insure the Uninsured Project said, “with the outgoing Schwarzenegger administration and the incoming Brown, there’s this whole handoff thing.”
And since the innovation grant application has to go in by Dec. 23, Wulsin said that’s a little worrisome.
Innovative Plan To Keep Yosemite Clinic Open
In January, the venerable clinic in Yosemite National Park will become the first medical facility in a national park to be operated by the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Officials now are hammering out details of the transition.