Latest California Healthline Stories
Why the Future of Health Care May Be on the Line With Prop. 30
If Proposition 30 fails to pass in the upcoming November election, billions of dollars worth of trigger cuts would kick in, cutting education funding drastically in California. But, it turns out, health and social service programs also have a lot riding on this election.
Physicians, Nurse Practitioners at Odds Over New Roles
It’s a time of celebration and indignation for Beth Haney, president of the California Association of Nurse Practitioners.
Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed into law a bill that will remove a six-month waiting period for new NP graduates to write prescriptions.
However, earlier last week, the American Academy of Family Physicians came out with a policy paper that raised questions about the wisdom of expanding the scope of practice for nurse practitioners.
Watch Sears and Darden, Not Obama vs. Romney, for Future of Health Care
Sears Holdings and Darden Restaurants are adopting a new direct contribution model for their employees’ health benefits, a change that may prompt other major companies to follow suit.
Governor Nixes Long List of Health Bills
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) vetoed a number of health care bills over the weekend. They ranged from a program designed to improve flu vaccinations among health care workers, to a proposal to define and promote patient-centered medical homes, to a regulation on hospital-nurse staffing ratios.
The governor had a variety of reasons he gave for the different vetoes, but at least one of those explanations didn’t make much sense, according Assembly member Henry Perea (D-Fresno). Perea is the author of AB 1000, a measure designed to make oral chemotherapy more affordable and accessible for Californians.
“While I support the author’s efforts to make oral chemotherapy treatments more affordable for the insured, this bill doesn’t distinguish between health plans and insurers who make these drugs available at a reasonable cost and those who do not,” Brown wrote in his veto message.
Access, Capacity Concerns for CBAS
California’s Community Based Adult Services program officially launches today, the culmination of a long and contentious effort to first eliminate and then replace the Adult Day Health Care program.
There were roughly 36,000 recipients of ADHC services when the governor first proposed eliminating it as a Medi-Cal benefit in January, 2011. After a long budget fight, the Legislature voted to end ADHC in May, 2011, with the proviso that a stripped-down replacement program would take its place. That plan was vetoed by the governor in June 2011, prompting a legal challenge by Disability Rights California. The settlement of that lawsuit in December 2011 led to creation of the new CBAS program.
According to Department of Health Care Services officials, about 80% of former ADHC beneficiaries now can receive CBAS benefits, which mirror ADHC services. The remaining 20% are eligible for enhanced case management services.
Millions Will Fall Through ACA Cracks in California, Report Predicts
A new joint report from UC-Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research predicts that as many as four million Californians still will be without health insurance after national health reforms are in place.
New Attention on End-of-Life Care
Partnership HealthPlan of California, a health insurer covering roughly 200,000 Medi-Cal beneficiaries in six Northern California counties, has decided to offer the optional benefit of palliative care to its members.
“It’s part of health care, and part of life,” said Richard Fleming, the regional medical director for PHP. “That’s why we’re arranging for greater availability of palliative care. It’s an enhanced benefit, for people before they’re in hospice.”
People in palliative care are severely ill, but don’t fall specifically into the definition of being within six months of dying. “They need a lot more medication management, and there are social issues they need help with,” Fleming said.
Is Quality Key to Cutting Long-Term Cost?
National health care reform presents an opportunity to improve the way California delivers and measures the quality of long-term care and save money along the way, according to organizers of a long-term care conference last week in Sacramento.
The long-term care population — often elders with multiple chronic conditions, multiple providers and sometimes dozens of medications — is an expensive one to treat. According to Lisa Shugarman, director of policy at the SCAN Foundation, which sponsored the conference, national reform gives California a chance to change the way it handles long-term issues.
“We are hoping to improve, not just the quality of long-term supports and services,” Shugarman said, “but also the quality of the system as a whole.”
Stakeholders: Medicare Should Cover Care Received in ‘Observation’
Medicare beneficiaries and care providers in California are part of a national chorus calling attention to Medicare’s lack of coverage for skilled nursing facility care after a patient has been “under observation” in an acute care hospital but not technically an “inpatient.”
FTC, Calif. AG Put Pressure on M&A — and Confuse Providers
Compete — or consolidate? Lawmakers can’t seem to decide which approach they want hospitals and doctors to follow, and the mixed messages are causing confusion.