Latest California Healthline Stories
Program Draws Medical Students to Fresno
An innovative program for third-year medical students is shaking up the structure of medical education and possibly grooming doctors for the areas that need them the most.
Is California Ready for Health Care Profit Sharing?
If value-based purchasing of health care spreads as many predict it will, would a logical next step be to reward consumers for choosing a low-priced alternative by sharing some of the profit? We asked insurers, consumer advocates, employers and employer groups to weigh in.
State Braces for Shortage of Care Providers as Elderly Population Continues To Grow
Assembly member Mariko Yamada, René Seidel and Erin Westphal of the SCAN Foundation, Michelle Nevins of the Del Oro Caregiver Resource Center and Cheryl Phillips of On Lok Lifeways spoke with California Healthline about eldercare issues.
Putting Prime Interest in Primary Care
Kelly Pfeifer, who recently took over as the medical director for the San Francisco Health Plan, knows the problems of medical economics all too well.
“We’ve been spending lots of money for health care and not getting a lot for it,” Pfeifer said at a forum in Sacramento put on by the Center for Health Improvement. “We’ve been paying for volume, not quality, and that’s what we get.”
Pfeifer also said she knows a few solutions for medicine’s troubles. “I do have hope that we can get out of this mess,” she said. “The answer is to invest in primary care.” Pfeifer had several examples of primary care innovations that have shown promise.
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.
State of Nursing in the State of California
The National Summit on Advancing Health through Nursing was held in Washington, D.C., yesterday to officially launch a report called The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. It listed the developments that need to happen in nursing during health care reform.
“This is the first day of the future of nursing,” Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said at yesterday’s summit. “This is the day when we fill the critical piece of the health care picture. We are here not to reform but to transform how care is delivered.”
Donna Dolinar is on the board of the California chapter of the American Nursing Association, and she was at the D.C. conference.
Myth-Busting the Reform Law: Sea Change or Scapegoat?
A number of organizations have painted the health reform law as a catalyst for changes in their industries. Yet some groups may be invoking the law as a scapegoat for transformations that would have happened anyway, or using it as a convenient platform on which to advance their interests.
Emergency Departments Chafe at Low Payments, Lack of Help
Emergency departments in California often struggle to get paid for treating patients with a certain type of health insurance. In those cases, reimbursement is routinely delayed or denied, physicians say. Doctors complain that state officials are refusing to address the problem.
DMHC Not Listening to Complaints?
What if you gave a legislative oversight hearing, and the object of that hearing didn’t show up?
That was the case last week, when the Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services conducted an oversight hearing to deal with complaints about the Department of Managed Health Care. Emergency department officials, who feel they’ve been grossly and routinely underpaid by some insurance organizations, say the DMHC is supposed to adjudicate those conflicts, but has instead been ignoring them.
“This is extraordinarily disrespectful. I’m extraordinarily displeased they decided not to participate,” Assembly member Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) said.
Mapping Out Future for Rural Health Care
The problems faced by rural health providers go far beyond whether or not patients have insurance coverage, according to Danny Fernandez, legislative advocate for the National Rural Health Association, who spoke at the 10th annual conference of the California State Rural Health Association this week in Sacramento .
“At some point, ‘national health reform’ morphed into ‘national health insurance reform,’ ” Fernandez said. But it’s not just about making sure everyone’s insured, he said. “Our overall message to Capitol Hill was, if you don’t have access to a provider, then it doesn’t matter if you do or don’t have insurance coverage.”
That is probably the number one problem in rural areas throughout the state and nation, he said, along with a general lack of funding for rural health care. National health care reform, Fernandez said, might be able to address both concerns — by increasing funds through better insurance, and by offering incentives and programs to get medical providers into rural areas.