CHA provides timely information to its members on a daily basis
through CHA News, issued at 3 p.m. every day, Monday
through Friday. This section contains a
chronological listing of CHA News articles. For
information by topic, please visit the Hospital Topics section.
CHA-sponsored AB 900 (Alejo, D-Salinas), which would reverse
pending cuts implemented by AB 97 in 2011, today passed out of
the Assembly Appropriations Committee. The bill, which previously
had been expanded to include many provider groups, was reportedly
amended to focus on cuts to distinct-part skilled-nursing
facilities. CHA will provide additional information as soon
as it becomes available.
CHA also learned today that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
has denied CHA’s motion for an en banc review of the December
2012 decision that cleared the way for state implementation of
the Medi-Cal cuts. In the attached CHA media
statement on the court’s decision, CHA President/CEO C. Duane
Dauner states that “We are evaluating next steps in terms of the
judicial process. Today’s decision only reinforces CHA’s effort
as part of a bipartisan statewide coalition to reverse the cuts
as part of the state budget process.”
The American Hospital Association has announced it will
contribute $50,000 to a fund for employees of Moore Medical
Center in Moore, OK, the hospital that was severely damaged by
this week’s tornado. The Norman Regional Health Foundation, part
of Norman Regional Health System, is managing the fund and
accepting online, tax-deductible donations at www.normanregional.com/en/donate.html.
Donations also may be mailed to Norman Regional Health
Foundation, P.O. Box 1665, Norman, OK 73070. To benefit the
employees, online donations must be made in honor of employees
for Moore Medical Center, and checks should note “Employees –
Moore Medical Center.”
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) requests
reports of any isolation of Candida among injection drug users
from blood cultures since March 1. The Oregon Public Health
Division is investigating a cluster of Candidemia (defined as any
Candida species isolated from blood) cases in Lane County,
Oregon, among injection drug users between October 2012 and April
2013, with one case including endocarditis. Three of the
Candidemia cases have occurred since March 6.
While the investigation is ongoing, interim data show that
patients were intravenously injecting “black tar” heroin as well
as methamphetamine. The Candida species identified to date are
C. albicans and C. pelliculosa. CDPH
acknowledges concerns about additional cases, specifically along
the I-5 drug traffic route from Mexico. Reports and questions
about the issue can be directed to Allison.Stone@cdph.ca.gov.
Covered California has announced the 13 health plans that will
participate in the state’s health benefits exchange beginning in
2014. At least two health insurance options will be
available in most of California’s 19 geographic regions.
The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis has posted
two new publications focused on health care workforce trends.
The U.S. Nursing Workforce: Trends in Supply and
Education presents data on the supply, distribution and
education of the U.S. nursing workforce. The report
includes information on both the registered nurse and
licensed practical/vocational nurse workforces, presenting an
analysis of recent trends in the nurse supply and the production
of new nurses nationally and by state. The Compendium of
Federal Data Sources to Support Health Workforce Analysis
summarizes 19 federal data sources that can be used to support
health workforce analysis and is designed to help those
interested in the health workforce understand how to use the
data. Both the Compendium and the
U.S. Nursing Workforce can be downloaded from the
National Center’s website.
The California Hospital Association (CHA) is disappointed by the
decision of the United States Courts for the Ninth Circuit, Court
of Appeals to sustain devastating retroactive Medi-Cal
cuts. We are evaluating next steps in terms of the judicial
process. Today’s decision only reinforces CHA’s commitment
as part of the We Care for California coalition, a bipartisan
statewide effort to reverse the Medi-Cal cuts for all
providers.
With overwhelming legislative support, it is clear this is a
bipartisan issue. It is not about labor or business, urban or
rural communities. Reversal of these cuts is a California
priority.
As we near implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act
(ACA), the door to coverage is opening for many uninsured
Californians. Today’s announcement by California’s health benefit
exchange – Covered California – is good news in two respects: 1)
at least two health insurance options will be available
throughout most of the state; and 2) affordable premiums may be
available to qualified individual consumers.
SACRAMENTO, CA – In a new online video released today, the
California Hospital Association (CHA) profiled an innovative
mobile medical clinic program in Los Angeles County that would be
jeopardized by the passage of Assembly Bill (AB) 975, a costly
and unnecessary rewrite of the state’s community benefit
requirements for nonprofit hospitals.
REDDING (May 17, 2013) – Citing the devastating impact that
pending Medi-Cal payment cuts would have on the North State’s
most vulnerable patients, local hospital leaders in Redding today
joined with patient families to call on state lawmakers to enact
new legislation that would preserve the state’s health care
safety net.
FRESNO, Calif., May 17, 2013 – Citing the devastating impact that
pending Medi-Cal payment cuts would have on the Valley’s most
vulnerable patients, Assemblymember Henry T. Perea (D-Fresno)
joined with local hospital leaders today to call on state
lawmakers to enact new legislation that would preserve the
state’s health care safety net.
If you think of a hospital at all, it’s probably only as a place
to go when you’re sick and need professional care. But
California’s not-for-profit hospitals do much more in terms of
enhancing our quality of life, no matter what community you live
in, no matter your income level, with a wide range of services.
Disappointingly, a recent Desert Sun editorial questioned that
commitment, relying not on local or state information, but rather
a biased study funded by special interests to support legislation
that imposes a vague and uncertain financial standard on
not-for-profit hospitals; a standard that ultimately threatens
the availability of critical health care programs.
House Republicans moved to divert money from the healthcare
reform law’s prevention and public health fund to shore up a
program the law created to give temporary relief to Americans who
can’t otherwise afford health insurance because of pre-existing
conditions. The committee voted 27 to 20 along party lines to
approve H.R. 1549, known as The
Helping Sick Americans Now Act.
The primary author of the 2010 healthcare overhaul is worried
that the health insurance exchanges planned for launch this year
are headed for a “train wreck.”
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee,
said Tuesday that the lack of details provided to him and the
amount of confusion he had heard from constituents indicate that
the Obama administration will not launch health insurance
exchanges in all 50 states on time.
There’s a high-profile
and important paper in JAMA this week by Sunil Eappen and
colleagues. The study looked at surgical discharges during 2010
from a single 12-hospital system and came to the conclusion that
admissions that include a surgical complication were associated
with a higher profit (defined as the contribution margin) than
admissions without complications. The authors conclude that this
creates a disincentive for hospitals preventing surgical
complications since they might see reduced profits as a result.
This is a very provocative finding and it’s getting a lot of
well-placed
media attention, as you might expect. There is an important
caveat with the study that I would like to highlight.
They come into the emergency department as if it’s their second
home; indeed, they often are on a first-name basis with the
medical personnel who are there to greet and treat them. On this
particular Sunday night in a suburban Washington, D.C., hospital,
a patient is in the ED, smiling but with a bloodied face. A nurse
whispers in the hallway: “Mary’s alcohol level is high again.”
Just as the bartenders at the local taverns do, the ED nurses
know Mary.
Infant mortality in the U.S. has declined 12% since 2005 after
holding steady for many years, according to data released
Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The infant mortality rate in 2011 was 6.05 deaths per every 1,000
live births, down from 6.87 in 2005, according to the report from
the National Center for Health Statistics.
The nation’s infant mortality rate fell by 12 percent from 2005
through 2011, a promising pattern that researchers say may be due
in part to a decline in premature births. The decline came after
a period of stalled progress. Although the infant mortality rate
dropped significantly over the 20th century, it remained static
from 2000 to 2005, according to a report
released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System picked four
new HMO plans for five-year health insurance contracts starting
next year, a blow to incumbent carrier Blue Shield of California.
The giant pension fund voted Wednesday to split up Blue Shield’s
statewide HMO contract and offer additional plans from Anthem
Blue Cross, UnitedHealth Group Inc., Sharp Health Plan and Health
Net Inc. alongside Blue Shield.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System said late
Wednesday that it’s splitting the HMO contract now held by Blue
Shield of California among five health plans, including San
Francisco-based Blue Shield. The move, though not unexpected, is
a big blow to Blue Shield and new CEO Paul Markovich. CalPERS is
looking to create more competition among health plans, with a
view toward keeping costs low and quality high.
Health Net got a reprieve Wednesday, when the California Public
Employees’ Retirement System board added the health plan into the
line-up of potential HMO plans in its health benefits program
next year. The Pension and Health Benefits Committee left Health
Net out on Tuesday, when members approved Blue Shield of
California, Anthem Blue Cross, UnitedHealthcare and Sharp Health
Plan for the program in 2014 if contracts can be negotiated
successfully. The Board of Administration added Health Net
without comment.
Patients tend to do better when their doctors pay attention to
their individual needs and circumstances, according to a new
study.
“In a sense that sounds sort of obvious, but no one has ever
showed that before,” said Dr. Saul Weiner, the study’s lead
researcher.
Weiner, a physician and health services researcher at Jesse Brown
VA Medical Center and the University of Illinois at Chicago, said
doctors are often focused on meeting recommended guidelines, such
as prescribing certain medications for a condition like high
blood pressure.
The drastic MediCal cuts to skilled nursing facilities in
California are faced with an army of protests and legislative
blockades. For Eastern Plumas Heath Care this could mean the
difference between life and death.
“We’re feeling positive about things,” said EPHC Public Relations
Coordinator Linda Satchwell. “The huge amount of effort we’re
putting in is really going somewhere. It’s all starting to
register.”
Healthcare innovators looking to fuel their big data analytics
dreams have a new source of inspiration – and money. The Care Transformation
Prize Series will provide at least three quarterly prizes of
$100,000 to the teams that develop the best solutions to
challenges to be selected by the public and vetted by a panel of
judges.
Demo Mobile kicked off this morning with presentations from four
mobile health startups. Each of these companies is applying
mobile technology to the medical field to give people more
control over their bodies, or to streamline the clinical process
for physicians. “Mobile computing is just getting bigger and
bigger,” said Demo’s executive producer Erick Schonfeld in an
interview before the event.
UnitedHealth Group’s first-quarter net income dropped 14%, as the
nation’s largest health insurer paid out more for medical claims
and booked a smaller gain due to leftover insurance claims.
The Minnetonka, Minn., company also said Thursday it still backs
a forecast it made last November for 2013 earnings to range
between $5.25 and $5.50 per share, but it expects less revenue
because a big client changed its insurance coverage.
Pacific Partners Management Services and its 803-physician
Individual Practice Association Medical Group of Santa Clara
County have agreed to collaborate with UCSF Medical Center and
create an integrated healthcare system in the San Francisco area,
according to a news release.
The parties signed a letter of intent on March 22 and could
finalize the deal by the end of June. Individual Practice
Association Medical Group of Santa Clara County is
physician-owned with more than 60 medical specialties.
That’s when industrialist Henry J. Kaiser decided to build a
hospital for Kaiser Steel Mill employees and their families.
Kaiser asked Dr. Sidney Garfield to establish the hospital and
medical care program in Fontana, just as he had done at Kaiser
shipyards in Richmond and in Vancouver, Wash.
‘Could you help me get the cirrhotic liver in bed 403B down for
his CT scan?” “I need to go order medications for the AIDS
patient in room 5320.” “She’s an epileptic, so she needs to have
padding placed on her bed rails.” “You know what the sheik
admitted yesterday morning? Well, he needs some additional blood
tests.”
Hearing comments such as these is not uncommon in hospitals
across the nation. The people who speak them are probably not
biased, nor are they bad people. They are selecting these quick
descriptors as short cuts in language to quickly convey a message
to a co-worker. But to many of those people being assigned these
labels, the descriptors are stigmatizing and even offensive.
An inhaled lung drug developed by Theravance Inc. and
GlaxoSmithKline plc moved a step closer to approval Wednesday
after getting a positive recommendation from an FDA advisory
panel. The treatment, a once-a-day inhaled combination of a
corticosteroid (fluticasone furoate) and bronchodilator
(vilanterol), abbreviated as FF/VI and branded as Breo Ellipta,
got a 9-4 vote in favor of approval from the Food and Drug
Administration’s Pulmonary-Allergy Drugs Advisory Committee, or
PADAC.
In a new online video released today, the California Hospital
Association (CHA) profiled an innovative mobile medical clinic
program in Los Angeles County that would be jeopardized by the
passage of Assembly Bill (AB) 975, a costly and unnecessary
rewrite of the state’s community benefit requirements for
nonprofit hospitals. “I would say this is a quintessential
community benefit program,” said Glenn Lopez , M.D., referring to
his 34-foot “clinic-on-wheels” that serves communities throughout
the San Fernando Valley five nights a week.
New legislation
from Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) is welcome news to 20 state
hospital associations working to eliminate a contentious hospital
wage-index provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act. Brady’s bill—the Medicare Hospital Wage Index Equity
Act of 2013—relates to the rural floor component of
Medicare’s hospital wage index, which guarantees the wage
index for rural hospitals is not more than the index for urban
hospitals.
Before the 2010 healthcare overhaul, federal law required that
payments for hospital wage-index adjustments be budget-neutral
within a state so that only hospitals in that state would be
affected by the changes.
Not-for-profit healthcare providers are making a number of
changes to decrease the burden of underfunded pension
obligations, including making sweeping changes to their
retirement plans and investment strategies.
A report from Moody’s Investors Service noted that underfunded
pension liabilities are continuing to put pressure on hospital
balance sheets, as providers find themselves weighing numerous
competing capital requirements. About 72% of the 460 hospitals
that Moody’s rates currently offer pension plans.
It might take more than a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine
go down for many Americans. In a survey of more than 1,000 adult
patients who are on prescription medication for chronic
illnesses, 40 percent say they haven’t followed doctor’s
instructions or have skipped taking their meds at least once in
the past year. More than a quarter said they’ve stopped taking
medications altogether or never even filled a prescription. It’s
a problem known as medication nonadherence and is linked to
125,000 deaths in the United States each year.
Thousands of healthcare workers walked off the job at the
University of California’s five medical centers on Tuesday,
delaying emergency care, surgeries, diagnostic procedures and
other medical treatment throughout the state.
The union representing nearly 13,000 vocational nurses,
respiratory therapists and radiology technicians said it called
the two-day strike to draw attention to staff shortages they said
undermine patient care at the hospitals in San Francisco, Davis,
Los Angeles, San Diego and Irvine.
As many state legislative sessions have finished or are nearing
completion, advocates of expanding Medicaid eligibility are
looking at their next steps.
Expansion of Medicaid eligibility as called for by the 2010
healthcare overhaul will not happen in 19 states, and seven more
states are leaning against expanding, according to the latest
estimates by Avalere Health.
But the failure of the expansion to pass in many recently or
nearly concluded state legislative sessions is unlikely to spell
the end for those measures.
A loophole in California’s upcoming health care overhaul could be
exploited by families gaming the system or responding to hardship
in a way that doctors say could leave a pile of unpaid bills.
A chain of events would create a two-month period during which a
family has medical coverage but no insurer must pay its claims.
Despite the ongoing attempts of Republicans to
repeal President Obama’s health reform law and link it to the
current scandal at the Internal Revenue Service, the
administration is going ahead with two major Affordable Care Act
regulations that provide insurance to people with pre-existing
conditions and set maximum profit margins for certain providers.
The rules for both regulations will be published this week in the
Federal Register, according to the The Hill’s RegWatch
blog post.
Congressional Republicans warned Tuesday that the public might
not be able to trust the people who will help navigate new
coverage options under President Obama’s healthcare law.
Republicans questioned whether felons could sign up to help
people navigate the healthcare law, then make off with reams of
personal information. They also said lax regulations might lead
to bad advice.
The White House is losing support for Obamacare from some leading
labor unions that are concerned their members could lose
healthcare coverage once the program is fully implemented.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW)
said it is worried that its members will actually lose healthcare
coverage they have now once the Affordable Care Act is fully
implemented early next year, reports The Hill.
The main premise of the president’s health-care reform is to
extend coverage to everyone, and to make that financially
attainable, the system will rely on young (and presumably more
healthy) consumers entering the market. But there’s a potential
snag in the financing plan: younger Americans might not opt to
sign up for insurance. The Affordable Care Act requires citizens
to sign up for health-care insurance by 2014 or face a fine.
A meeting of the House Committee on Government Oversight and
Reform called ostensibly to discuss the role that navigators and
assistors will play in the enrollment process for new health
insurance marketplaces included statements and questions about
role the IRS is expected to play in the implementation of
healthcare reform. The meeting veered further off topic into
concerns over the fundraising efforts of Kathleen Sebelius, the
secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
About 17,000 Californians with serious medical problems will be
moved from a state-run stopgap health insurance program to a
federal plan starting in July, ensuring they will have no break
in medical coverage until the national health care reforms kick
in next year, state officials announced this week. The state
board that oversees the California Pre-Existing Condition
Insurance Plan said participants will continue receiving benefits
from the federal government until 2014.
Medicaid is widely regarded as a poor payer related to costs, but
hospitals, especially the nation’s safety-nets, are eager to get
more of their state’s residents on the plan nevertheless. That’s
because Medicaid’s reimbursement rate, which varies by state, is
much better than nothing at all, which is what many hospitals
claim they get, in reimbursement terms, from treating the
uninsured.
Patients usually are able to put their trust in medical
professionals, but in the Bay Area some bad doctors are showing
up with perfect records because the medical board that oversees
them isn’t doing its job. Robyn Frankel had an active and
accomplished life as a horsewomen and trainer in Woodside. She
was raising two beautiful children and living an extremely active
life with family and friends. That was until she went into the
hospital to have an operation for her migraines.
Patients do not always take prescriptions as instructed and
doctors cannot always tell who has lapsed, with potentially
harmful and costly consequences. But that could change with more
training, better tracking and less reliance by clinicians on
rules of thumb for quick decisions, wrote three researchers in
the Journal of the American Medical Association. Those decision
shortcuts can speed treatment, but not always effectively, said
Zachary Marcum, a pharmacist and one of the
report’s three authors. Research suggests that clinicians
often fail to accurately predict how closely patients stick to
their prescriptions.
Three healthcare organizations are defending the federal health
IT booster programs against calls from GOP senators who want a
“reboot.” Six U.S. senators who last month criticized the health
information technology efforts of the Obama administration had
asked for
comments on issues raised in their 28-page white paper, and
they received several of those. The three healthcare groups
offered criticism along with their support.
With the snip of a giant red ribbon, San Joaquin Community
Hospital celebrated the long-awaited opening of its new cancer
and outpatient surgery center Tuesday morning.
The AIS Cancer Center at San Joaquin Community Hospital has been
open since late April, but Mayor Harvey Hall, hospital
administrators and donors gathered with the center’s staff to
memorialize the occasion this week.
The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis has posted
two new publications focused on health care workforce trends.
The U.S. Nursing Workforce: Trends in Supply and
Education presents data on the supply, distribution and
education of the U.S. nursing workforce. The report
includes information on both the registered nurse and
licensed practical/vocational nurse workforces, presenting an
analysis of recent trends in the nurse supply and the production
of new nurses nationally and by state. The Compendium of
Federal Data Sources to Support Health Workforce Analysis
summarizes 19 federal data sources that can be used to support
health workforce analysis and is designed to help those
interested in the health workforce understand how to use the
data. Both the Compendium and the
U.S. Nursing Workforce can be downloaded from the
National Center’s website.
A report released yesterday by the California Healthcare Foundation provides a reference point for health plans and insurers in the state before changes from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) take effect. The report uses data primarily from the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) and the California Department of Insurance (CDI) to examine market share, enrollment, financial performance, share of premiums devoted to medical care and consumer satisfaction.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office has published a report that
includes various charts, tables and other “snapshots” of
information to provide a broad overview of public finance and
program trends in California. The report contains facts and
statistics related to jobs, the state’s economy, and the
financing of health and human services, education, and other
government programs. For more information, view the full report
at http://lao.ca.gov/laoapp/PubDetails.aspx?id=2674.
The California HealthCare Foundation has updated its annual
publication that examines individuals in the state who lack
health coverage, providing data on income, work status, age and
ethnicity. The report finds that in 2011, California had the
highest number of uninsured under age 65 — 7.1 million — of any
state in the nation. The number has been increasing steadily for
the past two decades. Other key findings include nearly one in
four workers is uninsured; nearly one-third of uninsured have
annual incomes of $50,000 or more; fifty-four percent of
uninsured children are in families with a head of household who
worked full-time during 2011. For more information, see the
updated California Health Care Almanac at www.chcf.org/publications/2012/12/californias-uninsured.
The California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) has released two
reports, one on Fresno and one on the San Francisco Bay
Area, as part of a series of six reports that provide
details of local health care systems and identify common themes
and emerging issues that influence how Californians receive
health care. The reports are based on studies CHCF commissioned
on six large and diverse regional markets in California to
examine how health care is delivered and financed across the
state. For more information and to view the reports, go to
the CHCF website at www.chcf.org/almanac/regional-markets.
