Latest California Healthline Stories
The Decision Turf Between Care Providers and Patients
There has been a shift in medicine toward involving patients more in decisions about their own health. In an article in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association, a California physician explains how that outwardly time-consuming process could not only make patients happier with their care, but might actually save time for care providers.
Time is short for physicians, especially these days. And that’s one of the reasons the patient-doctor dynamic shifted from one extreme to another, according to Alexander Kon, who has been a pediatric intensive care physician at UC Davis (though he is soon taking his talents to San Diego, to the Naval Medical Center there).
About two decades ago, Kon said, many physicians embraced a new model of care, where the doctor provides information and leaves the final decision about treatment options up to the patient. Which is both good and bad, he said.
Primary Docs Centerpiece of Reform, but Where Are They?
Health care reform may help alleviate shortage of primary care physicians, but it will take major shifts in medical training and procedures, experts say.
Recruiting, Training More Health Care Workers
There is a dearth of health care providers in California, and the demand for more highly skilled health workers will only increase when national health care reform goes into effect. That’s the word from Tom Riley, legislative advocate for the California Academy of Family Physicians, speaking at a Senate Health Committee hearing last week.
“We think the time has come for this to be front and center in the health care debate, the workforce issue,” Riley said. “This is a terribly important thing for us to be addressing.”
The proposed law, AB 2551 by Assembly member Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), would establish the Health Workforce Development Council, a task force charged with tackling how to recruit and train a new segment of the health care workforce.
Will ACOs Be A-OK? Model Stirs Hopes, Questions
Accountable care organizations, or ACOs, are the most-discussed acronym-cum-health care payment model since HMOs. As providers across the nation rush to adopt the concept, is California poised to be a leader?
Ombudsman Program Tries to Follow Money
California’s long-term ombudsman program, a volunteer network governed by a state agency, is designed to represent and advocate for people in nursing homes and senior housing. In many cases, it’s the only forum seniors have to voice complaints and concerns about their living situations — which makes it an extremely popular program among seniors.
Right now, the state’s ombudsman program may be beloved, but it’s a beloved orphan.
Last year, the $3.8 million program was cut, and then lawmakers later restored almost half of it — $1.6 million. But now, even that temporary funding is gone, and officials have been scrounging to come up with enough money to keep the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program going.
The Perils, Promise of Retail Clinics in California
Medical clinics in drugstores and large retail emporiums have spread slowly but surely in California, but impending changes from national health care reform could change the nascent retail clinic industry’s growth pattern. Will it get a boost, or will it slow down even further?
Think the wheels of Sacramento politics move slowly? Think again.
On Monday, when the California Legislature returns from its summer recess, the Senate Committee on Appropriations plans to conduct a session that is expected to last 12 hours — and possibly longer — when it takes up and either approves or denies 203 new laws.
If you do the math, that’s just 3 minutes and 31 seconds for each bill — to introduce, argue both sides, have questions answered and vote on each piece of legislation.
Do Hospice Facilities Need Own Rules?
There are separate requirements for all kinds of health-related places — nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, congregate living health facilities — so should there be separate definitions and requirements for hospice facilities? Since end-of-life care differs from extending-of-life care, should separate facilities be built just for hospice?
Those are some of the questions taken on last week in a Senate appropriations committee special hearing on AB 950 by Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), and the legislative answers are not simple.
“The basic question is: Is there a need for a specific hospice license category?” hearing chair Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara) said.
State Makes Push for Coverage for Pregnant Women
A bill to require health insurance plans to include maternity care is on the doorstep of the Senate floor, but it will have to resolve some fiscal questions before it moves forward.
“Very simply, when women do not have maternity services as part of their heath insurance, or have maternity services that are substandard they end up going on state programs, like AIM, the Access for Infants and Mothers program, which is a subset of Medi-Cal (the state’s Medicaid program),” said bill author Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate).
“As of 2009,” he said, “about 1,400 women were enrolled with policies that did not cover maternity services, so the rest of us had to pay for it.” An even greater number had policies with high deductibles or inadequate coverage, De La Torre said, and they used state programs, as well.
Medical Professionals Make Their Mark on Reform
It was Kim Belshé, the Secretary of California Health and Human Services, who recently made an appeal for “not the politics of reform, but the policy of reform.”
What she meant is that working on the implementation of health care reform in California should be a grassroots affair — that politicians shouldn’t lead reform, but rather, health professionals should take the reins to revamp our health care system.
That’s the idea behind the town hall meeting, “Putting the Care in Obamacare,” that’s being held today (Monday) in Los Angeles, according to Leif Wellington Haase, director of the California program at New America Foundation, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group that’s putting on the conference.