Latest California Healthline Stories
Hospital Tax May Go to Reserve
The state budget proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown extends the Hospital Quality Assurance fee, which is due to expire at the end of 2013. The complicated fee structure was originally planned to gather about $2.8 billion from private hospitals over the 30-month life of the fee. Some of the money is used to tap federal matching money, which benefits both hospitals and the state.
The state estimates extending the fee would add $310 million to the state’s general fund in fiscal year 2013-14.
Private hospitals have no problem paying the Hospital Quality Assurance fee, according to Jan Emerson-Shea, vice president of external affairs for the California Hospital Association.
Online Game Asks Players To Design Hospital of the Future
A crowdsourcing game staged by the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto attracted more than 600 players from disparate parts of the world who compared and competed with ideas about what hospitals should look like in the future.
Budget Called a ‘Godsend’ for Health Care Community
California Health and Human Services Secretary Diana Dooley summed up the health care impact of yesterday’s budget proposal this way:
“The good news is, there are no cuts,” Dooley said. “While we are not restoring anything, we are not cutting, either.”
That was a tremendous relief to Senate member Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), chair of the Senate Committee on Health. After enduring year after year of multi-billion-dollar cuts to health programs, he said no budget news is good budget news.
Health Proponents Watching Budget for Medi-Cal Provider Rate Cut
Governor Jerry Brown today will release his plan to fix a projected $1.9 billion deficit in the state’s budget. Despite the recently rosier financial outlook for the state, many in the California health community still hold concerns that those new cuts may come out of the hide of health care.
“It sounds like education is going to be made whole, it sounds like prisons are going to be made whole, so yes, we’re fearing further cuts to health care,” said Francisco Silva, general counsel for the California Medical Association. “There is still a $1.9 billion deficit, after all.”
Silva was discussing the possible inclusion in the budget of a 10% Medi-Cal provider rate reimbursement cut that was approved by the state Legislature but has not gone into effect because it’s being challenged in court.
New Institute Hopes To Boost Primary Care Pay, Numbers in California
A new organization launching next week — the California Advanced Primary Care Institute — hopes to engage a broad spectrum of stakeholders to do what others have tried with little success: change the way primary care doctors are recruited, trained and paid in California.
Anthem, Jones Spar Over Premium Rate Hikes, Reinsurance Fee
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones yesterday said a recent rate submission by Anthem Blue Cross was “unreasonable” and took particular issue with Anthem’s plans to charge a reinsurance fee which Jones said forces small businesses to pay for a 2014 fee a year early, in 2013.
Anthem Blue Cross officials said Jones’ numbers are off and that the reinsurance fee is a benign and standard business practice which has been used for many years without complaints from government or advocates.
“I’ve concluded that the rate increase imposed by Anthem Blue Cross on its small employers customers is unreasonable,” Jones said. He said the average rate increase of 10.6% is not justified given the data submitted to the Department of Insurance by Anthem.
California Health Care Workers Divided Over Flu Vaccine Requirements for Hospital Staff
Zenei Cortez of the California Nurses Association, Jan Emerson-Shea of the California Hospital Association, Shawn Evans of Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla and Linda Good of Scripps Health spoke with California Healthline about the challenges that California hospitals face in raising influenza vaccination rates among health care workers.
New Year’s Resolutions: Tasks for California’s Exchange in 2013
California health insurance exchange officials have several significant tasks to accomplish in 2013, including implementing a marketing and outreach program and negotiating with insurers. Will the state be ready to launch the marketplace in 2014?
More California Kids Need Sealant, Study Says
A national study released today by the Pew Center on the States, part of the Pew Charitable Trusts, grades every state’s level of adherence to a basic preventive dental procedure for children — the application of dental sealant. California earned a “C.”
Dental sealant is vital for children, particularly for youngsters who don’t get regular dental care, according to Bill Maas, policy advisor to the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign.
“The most cavity-prone area is the molars, and the top surface of the teeth, and that’s what sealant helps protect,” Maas said. He said providing sealant is a simple way to reach a large number of at-risk children. “In places where we know there’s a concentration of [at-risk] children,” he said, “we can bring that to them very efficiently.”
How Can Hospitals Thrive in Future?
The first step in dealing with complex financial and care issues faced by community hospitals is to get people engaged and talking about them, according to the organizers of tomorrow’s online “Future of the Hospital” game. People will compete to present the most cogent and worthwhile ideas for improving hospitals in California and the nation.
Starting tomorrow morning and running for 24 hours, the Institute for the Future is putting on an online forecasting competition to prompt possible solutions for community hospitals with a discussion involving as many people as possible. The event is co-sponsored by the California HealthCare Foundation, which publishes California Healthline.
“As federal funding for hospitals nationwide dwindles, so does our ability to access basic care in hospitals,” said Jean Hagan, an executive producer for the Institute for the Future. “Our emergency medical system is over-burdened, underfunded and fragmented. The statistics are frightening.”