Latest California Healthline Stories
Changes Set Stage for ‘Shakeout’ of Medical Suppliers, Services
Experts predict changes in contracting practices might shrink the number of businesses supplying medical products and services in California by as much as 50% over the next few years.
Fresno Family Funds Pharmacy College in Central Valley
A new, private, four-year college offering post-graduate degrees in pharmacy is taking shape in the Central Valley. California Health Sciences University officials hope the school will help address the shortage of health care professionals in the region.
Should California Expand Providers’ Scope of Practice?
Hoping to bolster the ranks of providers able to deal with millions of newly insured Californians, the California Legislature this month will consider a proposal to give mid-level health care practitioners more autonomy and authority. We asked legislators and stakeholders if that’s a good idea.
The Radical Rethinking of Primary Care Starts Now
After years of being overlooked, primary care — or efforts to transform it, at least — has emerged as a major focus for reform. Here’s a look at the ongoing problems with primary care, and some of the more striking initiatives to redesign it.
Race, Gender, Age Lead to Disparities in Care
Health care providers from around the state gathered in Sacramento this week to examine disparities in medical care. They started by examining their own treatment of patients.
The annual conference of the California Association of Physician Groups took an unusual approach Wednesday to improving care, focusing on possible misconceptions or biased treatment by physicians of some patients.
The conference looked at possible disparities in treatment of Muslims or other culturally different patients, bias based on appearance and even bias toward patients who can’t be cured.
Medical Marijuana Case in State Supreme Court
The California Supreme Court today in San Francisco will hear oral arguments over a legal conundrum involving medical marijuana. The city of Riverside wants to ban sale of medicinal marijuana, a decision that may violate state law ensuring legal access to it. At the same time it adheres to federal law banning marijuana’s sale and use.
To Riverside officials opposed to marijuana sales, the answer is pretty simple: “A medical marijuana dispensary constitutes ‘a Prohibited Use’ ” in Riverside’s zoning code, which makes it a public nuisance, the city’s attorneys wrote in a legal brief. “Any use which is prohibited by state and/or federal law is also strictly prohibited,” the attorneys said.
But marijuana advocates, in their own brief, said Riverside officials are prohibiting the distribution of medicine, and that’s against state law.
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.
Northern California Addresses Safety-Net Challenges
Anticipating an influx of newly insured residents in 2014 when the Affordable Care Act fully takes effect, Northern California clinics are recruiting new primary care physicians and considering how to best use mid-level providers.
Will Firms Cut Jobs — or Benefits — Under ACA? Weighing the Evidence
Questions continue to swirl about the Affordable Care Act’s effect on employment and health coverage, with critics suggesting that the law will lead to more part-time hiring and supporters arguing that the concerns are overblown.
Big Changes in Store for Academic Medicine?
The financial pressure on academic medical centers has never been more intense than it is now, according to Mark Laret, CEO of UC-San Francisco Medical Center and outgoing chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges. The association, representing 141 medical schools across the country, held its annual meeting over the weekend in San Francisco.
“We have tried to use clinical income to make up for budget losses [that used to support medical schools],” Laret said. “And now that NIH (National Institutes of Health) budgets have flattened, that’s putting more pressure on, too, and increasingly we’ve had to use clinical income to support research, as well.”
In the recent past, Laret said, academic medicine has absorbed the decline in financial support for medical schools and research, but that’s changing, he said.