Latest California Healthline Stories
Dental Trips Emphasized for Young Children
Low-income children are not getting good dental care, even though many of them have coverage through the state. Shelley Rouillard would like to do something about that.
Rouillard, deputy director of benefits and quality monitoring at the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB), is leading an effort at MRMIB to get more young children to see the dentist — as early in their lives as possible, she said.
“Studies show that the younger the child (who gets dental care) the less it costs over their life for dental services,” Rouillard said. “So we want the percentage of kids who see a dentist to change, and we’re targeting the youngest kids. We’d like the children ages 0 to 3 to start being seen.”
Exchange Board Handles New Move Quietly
During the most recent board meeting of the California Health Benefit Exchange, board members gingerly approached the last item on the agenda — would the board stick its toe in political waters?
“I don’t know that it’s the board’s place to do this,” board member Paul Fearer offered at one point. Chair Diana Dooley, secretary of the state HHS agency, announced right at the start of the meeting she would abstain from legislative issues.
But clearly the board felt it was the board’s place to get involved in legislative waters — past the toes and ankle and maybe up to the knee — as it voted 3-0 on several motions to involve the exchange board’s input and opinion on half a dozen legislative bills.
New Online ‘Refor(u)m’ for State Health Issues
State efforts to enact national health care reform have proceeded at different paces — a situation made clear in a new online forum designed to help states implement the Affordable Care Act.
At a recent forum featuring representatives from North Carolina, New York and Virginia, the wide disparity of progress among the states became apparent.
It was part of an effort to get states to talk to each other about implementation of national health care reform, coordinated by a recently launched website.
Med Center Lowers Readmission Rates
Karen Rago of UC-San Francisco had an important task: help lower readmission rates of older heart failure patients. It’s one of the targets for health care reform, and the medical center wanted to see how hard it would be to do it.
Pretty hard, Rago said — at least at first.
“We started with a grant, and the aim was to reduce readmission rates at 30 and at 90 days,” Rago said. “That didn’t look like it was going to happen.”
Public Agency Takes Up Political Hammer
The board of the California Health Benefit Exchange voted last week to oppose a bill that would establish a basic health plan and to urge the lawmakers behind AB 52, which would regulate rate increases by insurers, to exempt the exchange from that law.
The board also voted to direct staff to work with legislators on four other bills that deal with the exchange — including two laws that directly refer to the exchange in their identifying titles.
All of the votes were 3-0, with member Robert Ross absent and chair Diana Dooley abstaining.
Veto Caps Tough Week for Adult Day Health Care
Today marks the 21st anniversary of the national Americans with Disabilities Act.
That anniversary carries a bit of a sting this year for seniors and the disabled in California, on the heels of yesterday’s veto by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) of a bill that would have created the Keeping Adults Free from Institutions (KAFI) program, which was supposed to take the place of the current adult day health care program.
Today also was the day set aside for the court hearing challenging the elimination of the ADHC program, but a judge last week approved delay of that hearing until Nov. 1.
DHCS Request To Delay ADHC Case Granted
The day in court for adult day health care will have to wait.
A U.S. District Court judge on Friday approved a request by the California Department of Health Care Services to put off the hearing that challenges the department’s elimination of the ADHC program.
The hearing on a suit by Disability Rights California was set for tomorrow. ADHC centers across the state were watching that date to gauge whether or not they’ll be able to remain open much longer. The new hearing is scheduled for Nov. 1, 30 days before the state’s scheduled elimination of the program at roughly 300 ADHC centers across California.
ADHC Saga About to Take a Pivotal Turn
The state Department of Health Care Services is moving to cancel its July 26 court hearing over the legality of eliminating the ADHC program.
DHCS also sent a letter this week to CMS asking for a three-month extension to the original Sept. 1 elimination date. That request was approved by CMS and that approval is being used as the basis for canceling the upcoming court date, according to Lydia Missaelides of the California Association of Adult Day Services.
On top of all of that, the word in the Dome is Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is set to veto the KAFI program as soon as today, or possibly over the weekend.
Incentive Plan Working for Public Hospitals
A big component of the federal Medicaid waiver California officials negotiated last year was the provision to set up an incentive program to redesign systems and improve quality in public hospitals.
It’s going well, apparently.
Melissa Stafford Jones of the California Association of Public Hospitals said all the state’s public hospitals “met their milestones.”
Children’s Programs Slowly Moving Forward at MRMIB
Reports of the demise of the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board were a little premature. There it was, alive and well at its monthly meeting last week, discussing expansion of existing programs and establishment of new ones.
MRMIB runs four programs: Healthy Families, Access for Infants and Mothers (AIM), the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) and the Major Risk Medical Insurance Program (MRMIP).
The agency was slated for elimination under the governor’s May budget revision. The current plan still is to phase out MRMIB’s activities by 2014, when much of its mission will be taken over by the new federal health care reform law. But when the Gov. Jerry Brown (D) announced in May that he wanted to move 900,000 children from the Healthy Families program to a Medi-Cal managed care plan, Brown also proposed the quick elimination of MRMIB, since Healthy Families is such a large part of what MRMIB does.