Latest California Healthline Stories
Rural Health Clinics Getting Short-Changed?
There was an interesting moment at this week’s annual conference of the California State Rural Health Association. During one of the presentations, a sit-down with two state Assembly members — V. Manuel Perez (D-Coachella) and recently elected Linda Halderman (R-Fresno) — the conversation seemed to veer away from rural health issues.
After hearing about high unemployment, the icy regulatory climate, too much government and arsenic contamination of water supplies, host Steve Barrow gently redirected the conversation.
“You know, rural [medicine] gets lost a lot in the Capitol,” he said. “We care about clean water, and cultural issues, and economic issues — but if we’re talking about economics in rural California, 11 percent of the rural economy is health care. Health care is a big part of economics in rural areas.”
Healthy Interest in Reform from Small Businesses
California’s small businesses are embracing the tenets of health care reform, according to John Arensmeyer, CEO of the Small Business Majority.
“The more people learn about it, particularly about the tax credits [offered by the Affordable Care Act], the more interested they are,” Arensmeyer said. “The real problem is that it’s a little unknown, so it’s important to get people to understand what’s in it.
According to a recent report by Bernstein Research in New York, more small-business employers — those with three to nine workers — are offering health insurance this year. Nationally, the number of small businesses offering insurance increased by 13 percentage points in a year, from 46% to 59%.
Urgent Care Clinics Arrive With Mixed Reviews in San Diego
The country’s only national urgent care franchise, Doctors Express, opened its first California-based center in San Diego this fall, with a second on its way in early 2011. Not everyone is convinced the new centers will provide much-needed relief to local emergency departments.
Primary Care Might Get its Due With Health Reform
It’s hard to delineate the possible progress being made in fixing the primary care problem in California and the nation, without first looking at how bad that problem is, according to Kevin Grumbach of the UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine, who addressed an audience of health professionals at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento this week.
“Health systems and regions built with primary care have better outcomes, better quality of care, lower costs and more equitable care,” Grumbach said.
“The trouble is, we’re finding that the whole foundation of primary care is crumbling.”
End-of-Life Expert Susan Tolle on Rolling Out Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment
Susan Tolle of the Oregon Health & Science University spoke with California Healthline about how California could learn from Oregon’s experience implementing Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment.
Medi-Cal Reimbursement Tops Policy List
The California Medical Association gathered in Sacramento last weekend, and the new CMA president came up with his own variation on the real estate agent motto:
It’s about funding, funding, funding.
“We would like to see physicians be able to maintain a viable practice, first and foremost,” new CMA president James Hinsdale said. “Physicians are being squeezed by Medicare, and squeezed by Medicaid [and by California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal].”
Spotting a Unicorn: ACOs Inch Closer to Reality
More health care providers are entering into arrangements to create “accountable care organizations,” but these emerging alliances face legal questions because regulators have yet to define ACOs. Potential answers, and several milestones, lie ahead for the model.
Post-Mortem on Physician Hiring Bills
A pilot program that has allowed some direct hiring of physicians in rural areas of California apparently generated a lot of interest in Sacramento. Three different bills were introduced to expand the scope of that pilot program, and all three of those bills failed.
In California, hospitals are not allowed to employ physicians directly, in order to maintain a kind of firewall between hospital administrators and the health care providers who make medical decisions.
But there is also a shortage of primary care physicians in rural areas of the state, so some medical centers were granted an exception to the no-direct-hiring rule, so that they could hire on their own doctor for their own facility. Many hospital administrators felt that suspension of the rule gave them a competitive hiring advantage.
Fresno Clinic May Help Prevent Physician Burnout
The Tzu Chi clinic in Fresno, where the goal is to “treat the poor and teach the rich,” helps rejuvenate volunteer physicians, who say prolonged visits with patients remind them why they “got into medicine.”
Doc Shortage Made Worse by Low Participation in Medi-Cal
California faces two related problems about to get worse: not enough family practice physicians and not enough physicians treating Medi-Cal patients. We asked stakeholders how California should deal with these two shortages.