Health Care Headlines

It’s been a few months since the worldwide WannaCry ransomware attacks, and a month and a half since the NotPetya attacks that hit U.S. hospitals and the drug company Merck. The cyberattacks were bad enough to get the attention of the health care industry — and the rest of us — but not bad enough to force the industry to solve the underlying problems.

AB 1250 puts vital services for our most vulnerable at risk by instituting a de facto ban on counties’ abilities to contract for efficient and effective delivery of local services.

 U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that aims to build partnerships with local organizations such as hospitals and medical clinics has set off alarms in communities on high alert in the wake of President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The same machine learning technology Google uses to anticipate the next word in a search query is in tests to advance predictive modeling in health care, and the tech giant is teaming up with three universities this year to research its ability to do so.

As Republicans and Democrats have battled strenuously over healthcare reform in recent years, important bipartisan developments have been underway in mental illness policy.

Cyberattacks are accelerating worldwide and the U.S. health care system is dangerously unprepared to defend itself, or its patients.

Americans are increasingly becoming more isolated, and public health experts are concerned.

Employment at the nation’s hospitals rose by 0.14% in July to a seasonally adjusted 5,119,400 people, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. That’s 7,300 more people than in June and 87,300 more than a year ago.

Federal health officials wrongly approved a 10 percent reduction in California’s already-low Medi-Cal rates for hospital outpatient services without considering the impact on access to care for more than 13 million low-income residents, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

In the three years since the Affordable Care Act took effect, its federally funded expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults has become the states’ most powerful weapon in the battle against the nation’s worsening opioid epidemic.

If you are looking for trends in the health and human services industry, California is often the place to look (see California As A Bellwether). Another great recent example of California at the forefront of industry trends is whole person care coordination – the practice of treating consumers with co-occurring health conditions and social services needs, specific to each consumer’s needs.

It’s never too early to start thinking about the upcoming 2018 elections. And while a lot of the focus so far has been on the House, a handful of hotly contested gubernatorial races could have higher stakes for health care — specifically, for the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.

This week, President Trump’s commission on combating the opioid crisis, led by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, recommended that the president declare a national emergency.  The problem has become significantly worse recently, so you might feel that you could use a little catching up. Here are 11 things you need to know.

Bill Daitchman got some bad news this week: His insurer is breaking up with him.  Daitchman and his wife, who own a graphic design business in Santa Cruz County, Calif., each pay $350 a month for a health insurance plan from Anthem Blue Cross on the Covered California exchange. But Anthem announced Tuesday it’s pulling out of most of the state’s individual markets, citing the uncertainty swirling around the Affordable Care Act.

Nurses have always been in high demand. That’s as true today as it always was, and the number and scope of nursing jobs is expanding every day. Nurses are more critical to the health care process then ever, and there is currently a shortage of qualified nurses! (And a shortage of primary care physicians … so nurses are even more in constant demand!)

Republicans showed signs Tuesday of reaching out to Democrats for a joint if modest effort to buttress health insurance markets, four days after the GOP effort to unilaterally uproot and reshape the Obama health care law crumpled in the Senate.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared a noninvasive neuromodulation device (Stimpod NMS460, Xavant Technology) for the relief of chronic intractable pain, the company has announced.

Californians who get their insurance on the state health exchange will pay on average 12.5 percent more in 2018. And consumers on the most popular plans will now have a surcharge added to their monthly bills.

Californians will learn Tuesday how much health insurance will cost in 2018. And for the 9 percent of Californians who buy health insurance through Covered California, rates could be to be up to 17 percent higher, according to officials with the state exchange.

The White House commission charged with advising the Trump administration on the country’s opioid epidemic is calling on President Donald J. Trump to declare a state of emergency to quickly and aggressively address this crisis.

U.S. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill on Thursday expanded an investigation into the causes of the opioid crisis plaguing the country, seeking information from four more drugmakers and three drug distributors.

Who could honestly believe the nation would support dumping coverage for 22 million people?  As David Leonhard wrote recently op-ed in the New York Times: “They [Republicans and President Trump] had only one big weakness, in fact: They weren’t dealing in reality.”  When faced with reality, it is interesting what a few good Senators with a conscience will refuse to do.

Chronic diseases are on the rise in the United States, leaving healthcare payers with the challenge of covering care for patients with these expensive, long-term conditions.

California’s Hospital Quality Institute (HQI) is the 2017 recipient of the Dick Davidson Quality Milestone Award for Allied Association Leadership for its work to improve health care quality, the American Hospital Association (AHA) announced today.

In a factory just outside San Francisco, there’s an upright stainless steel vat the size of a small car, and it’s got something swirling inside.

Providence St. Joseph Health announced $10 million in mental health funding on Wednesday, July 26, for California teens, expectant mothers and homeless patients, the first installment of a $30 million commitment over three years.

The Senate early this morning narrowly defeated a “skinny” repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that called for just a few changes to the embattled law, but one of those was big — the elimination of the individual mandate to obtain health insurance coverage.

When the groundbreaking geneticist Barbara McClintock was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1902, her parents initially named her Eleanor. But they soon felt that the name was too delicate for their daughter and began to call her Barbara instead, which they thought better suited her strong personality. Her parents accurately predicted her determination.

Virtual reality is no longer just a gimmick from sci-fi TV shows. Thanks to recent advancements in technology, everyday smartphones can be used in affordable mainstream VR headsets like the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream View.

An effort by Orange County supervisors to take control of the county’s health plan for nearly 800,000 low-income county residents appears to have died, after a change approved Tuesday that allows state legislators to block it before it takes effect.

Just two months before it was set to lose federal funding, Congressman David Valadao co-introduced legislation Tuesday to continue operating a critical program that trains physicians in rural areas.

The latest Senate bill has the same core flaws as the previous versions that a number of Senate Republicans have said they can’t support.

Building a ‘nimble’ multi-state health system: 5 questions with Ascension CEO Dr. Anthony Tersigni

Policymakers are giving serious consideration to proposals, such as the American Health Care Act (AHCA),1 that would fundamentally change the structure and financing of Medicaid – the federal-state program that provides health coverage for 70 million low-income Americans, including one in five people on Medicare. 

Eight major veterans’ organizations on Saturday urged Congress to provide emergency money to the Department of Veterans Affairs without cutting other VA programs as the House moved quickly to address a budget shortfall that threatened medical care for thousands of patients.

Several times a month, you can find a doctor in the aisles of Ralph’s market in Huntington Beach, Calif., wearing a white coat and helping people learn about food.

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has issued a clinical advisory about outbreaks of Hepatitis A in two California counties, recommending that providers show vigilance in offering the Hepatitis A vaccine to vulnerable patients.

Every three months, Sylvia Ray of Blythe, Calif., asks her daughter to drive her more than 100 miles west through the open desert to see a pain management specialist near Palm Springs.

In a landmark report, scientists have endorsed three strategies for preventing dementia and cognitive decline associated with normal aging — being physically active, engaging in cognitive training and controlling high blood pressure.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that at least 17 million more Americans would be uninsured in 2018 and premiums would rise by at least 25% under the Senate Republicans’ new proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response today released a resource to help emergency health care planners and providers prepare for and address response concerns related to the Aug. 21 solar eclipse.

Californians who buy individual health insurance plans on the state exchange won’t know how much their 2018 monthly premiums might be until Aug. 1.

Senate Republicans all but admitted defeat Tuesday in their seven-year quest to overturn the Affordable Care Act, acknowledging that they lacked the votes to make good on their vow to “repeal and replace” President Barack Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment.

A pilot program designed to provide stroke patients with emergency care more quickly will kick off next month in Westwood, San Pedro and Long Beach.

Several US states are destined to become neurology “deserts” because of a projected shortage of specialists, a finding that has major implications for the care and treatment of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Population health efforts are all about improving a community’s well-being, and Cottage Health hopes its new database tool will help nonprofits target programs to specific areas in need.

The revised health care bill released on Thursday by Senate Republican leaders still faces opposition from G.O.P. members. The bill needs at least 50 votes to pass, as Vice President Mike Pence could cast a tiebreaking vote.

A new kind of cancer treatment that uses genetically engineered cells from a patient’s immune system to attack their cancer easily cleared a crucial hurdle Wednesday.

Two civil rights groups and one of the state’s largest labor unions representing hospital workers have sued the state of California, alleging the state-administered Medi-Cal health insurance program for the poor discriminates against Latinos.

Nearly 37% of Americans have advance directives for end-of-life care if they become seriously ill or unable to make health care decisions, according to a new analysis of recent research.

The Senate has released the most recent version of its healthcare bill, and it appears that it may still not satisfy enough legislators to ensure passage.

A compilation of key facts and figures illustrates the breadth and scope of Medi-Cal coverage and how that coverage benefits its nearly 14 million enrollees in California.

All three of Leticia Aguilar’s children got their shots at the Sacramento Native American Health Center. After her mother had a stroke, Aguilar took her there for every follow-up appointment. Aguilar and her husband got sober there. Now they take classes there that link them to their culture.

We know — the Republican health care effort has been declared dead many times, so this is not a prediction. There’s still a lot of motion, and we could see a revised Senate bill on Thursday and a vote next week. But it’s time to at least consider what happens if Senate Republicans can’t pass a health care bill.

Updates regarding the GOP’s attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act continue to remain front and center in the news cycle. The following is a summary of the week’s highlights:

Senate Bill 562 would upend California’s health care marketplace and replace it with a government run system.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have panned the Senate Republican health care plan for its deep cuts to Medicaid and for imposing higher costs on older residents. Critics have also said the bill would loosen protections for individuals suffering from pre-existing conditions.

Three key factors may help reduce opioid-related deaths by nearly one third in individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD), new research shows.

This publication is a snapshot of many of the benefits Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program) provides to Californians.

Brenda Fitzgerald, MD, Georgia’s public health commissioner and someone widely respected in her field, has been named director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price, MD, announced today.

In the United States, opioid prescribing declined between 2010 and 2015 but remains at high levels and varies widely from county to county, according to a new Vital Signs report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Carmela Coyle, President/CEO of the Maryland Hospital Association, has been selected as the new President/CEO of the California Hospital Association (CHA) and its parent organization, the California Association of Hospitals & Health Systems (CAHHS). Coyle will replace long-time CHA President/CEO C. Duane Dauner, who is retiring.

President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have committed to repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). How do their replacement proposals compare to the ACA? How do they compare to each other?

Officials at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles are asking the public to step up their blood donations this summer. Blood donations typically slow down in the summer as more people travel or otherwise disconnect from their normal routines — but the summer is precisely when demand for blood and plasma goes up, explained Charif Masri, who manages transfusion medicine at Children’s Hospital.

As healthcare becomes more digitalized and networked, issues around data exchange make patient identification an increasing challenge. Without a national patient identifier (NPI), doctors rely on patient’s names and birth dates for identification and something as simple as a middle initial can cast doubt on a patient’s identity, not to mention the myriad identical names stored in EHR systems. Mismatching patients and records can lead to missed diagnoses or treatments.

For most medical school students, summer means fun in the sun and a much-needed break from studies. But Aljanee Whitaker was hard at work in mid-June, having just started a year-round UC Davis program that fast-tracks primary care doctors to graduate in three years instead of four.

The dozen beds that will open a week from Monday at Ventura’s downtown Salvation Army are intended to close a revolving door.

Standing in his new apartment, on the top of a two-level building in Oakland, Daniel Yapo admits his journey from homelessness to housing took a lot of help.

As Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tries to negotiate his way to a health bill that can win at least 50 Republican votes, there is one woman in the Senate who could stop the bill cold.

One is inside the hospital among patients and caregivers. The other is off the hospital campus, among the hundreds of thousands of local residents that Henry Mayo serves in the Santa Clarita Valley.

The risk of getting a deadly, treatment-resistant infection in a hospital or nursing home is dropping for the first time in decades, thanks to new guidelines on antibiotic use and stricter cleaning standards in care facilities.

If 22 million Americans lose their health care coverage by 2026 under the GOP Senate’s plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, how many people could die? The question is at the heart of the debate raging in Washington, D.C., but has been difficult to answer.

Rates of newly reported hepatitis C increased significantly among young people between 2007 and 2015, according to California’s public health department. Over that period, rates shot up 55 percent among young men ages 20 to 29 and 37 percent among young women in the same age group. The department says IV drug use among young people increases the risk of infection and transmission.

When the Cancer Moonshot initiative was launched, former US vice president Joe Biden was at “mission control.” And now he and his wife, Dr Jill Biden, are all set for another launch — the Biden Cancer Initiative.

A five-year Medicaid waiver program that infused billions of dollars into public hospitals prompted significant improvements in health care to California’s neediest population — the poor and uninsured, according to an extensive evaluation by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research

Amid a national epidemic of prescription opioid abuse, urgent care clinics in Los Angeles County have been slow to adopt guidelines designed to combat over-prescription and abuse of the powerful pain medications.

As a new doctor, I’ve learned that the best patient care happens as often outside of the hospital as inside. While we treat sick people and get them tuned up, each patient’s opportunity to get better and stay better often depends on their access to resources beyond clinical walls.

Jamboree, Orange County United Way, and the University of California, Irvine with the support of the Association of California Cities – Orange County (ACC-OC), 2-1-1 of Orange County, and the Hospital Association of Southern California collaborate on a study about the state of homelessness in Orange County to better understand its financial, social and political implications and find ways to end it.

Congressional forecasters say a Senate bill that aims to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would leave 22 million more people uninsured by 2026.

Senate Republicans’ health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, released Thursday, would lead to millions of Californians losing health coverage, paying more for insurance or seeing their benefits scaled back, according to health policy experts.

Rachael Goldring was born with congenital heart disease. Had she been born a few decades earlier, she probably would have died as a baby. Goldring is now 24 and among a population of patients who present new challenges to a health care system unaccustomed to dealing with survivors of once-fatal conditions.

An electronic alert decreased missed cases of sepsis in a pediatric emergency department (ED), but did not completely replace frequent assessments by physicians, a new study at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has found.

Do you know where your workplace’s automated external defibrillator is located? About half of all U.S. employees don’t, according to the results of an American Heart Association survey.

The American Hospital Association on Monday urged Republican senators to make sure hospitals are reimbursed if the number of uninsured patients grows following the passage of a healthcare bill that would repeal and replace portions of Obamacare.

With Congress currently discussing the American Health Care Act (AHCA), a plan that would repeal and replace the 2010 health care law, this month’s Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that more Americans have an unfavorable view of the plan than a favorable one (55 percent vs. 31 percent, respectively).

When the Republican-led Senate Rules Committee briefly flirted with the idea of restricting television interviews in the hallways of the Capitol last week, it became only the most obvious manifestation of how the party’s leaders were handling the development of a bill to overhaul Obamacare: out of the public eye.

Covered California’s governing board Thursday unanimously approved a fallback plan in case President Trump does away with subsidies that help certain consumers with their out-of-pocket medical costs.

Medi-Cal patients may soon be able to go to the dentist confident that every treatment they need will be covered, and the same could be true by 2020 for those seeking vision treatment under the program. State lawmakers have cut a deal with Governor Brown to restore previously cut dental and vision benefits, according to consumer advocates and a legislative staffer.

The nation’s healthcare system doesn’t have enough psychiatrists to treat an increasing number of patients who have gained access to behavioral health treatment thanks to expanded mental health coverage in recent years.

Ken Shefveland’s body was swollen with cancer, treatment after treatment failing until doctors gambled on a radical approach: They removed some of his immune cells, engineered them into cancer assassins and unleashed them into his bloodstream.

A man showing early signs of a heart attack — detected by a bot tracking his heart activity from a sensor on his wrist — is picked up by a self-driving car that checks his vital signs on the way to the hospital. There, his doctors video-conference with a specialist, who assesses his symptoms through a Skype-like screen and recommends a treatment plan.

The U.S. Veterans Affairs Department has awarded Kansas City-based Cerner Corp. a contract to create its electronic health record system.

Republicans in both the House and the Senate are considering big cuts to Medicaid. But those cuts endanger addiction treatment, which many people receive through the government health insurance program.

Medi-Cal patients are swamping California emergency rooms in greater numbers than they did before the Affordable Care Act took effect, despite predictions that the health law would ease the burden on ERs.

On June 9, members of California’s network of emergency air medical providers are assessing how dramatically their ability to care for patients will be impacted if one of their primary sources of funding is not renewed by the California Legislature