Health Care Headlines

Last Tuesday, the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved the addition of $9.6 million in funding for the Whole Person Care (WPC) pilot program. The funding is in addition to last year’s pledge of $23.5 million for the WPC program, which is aimed at delivering quality medical treatment and services to those experiencing homelessness, making the total amount being allocated for WPC over the next five years more than $33 million.

The moment that an accreditation team shows up unannounced can spike the pulse of even the most seasoned hospital executive. The next several days will amount to one big exam for the safety and quality of care, as surveyors meet with executives, managers and care teams, and watch first-hand as care is delivered.

In Stanislaus County, lower-income residents and older working adults who rely on Obamacare for insurance against crushing medical bills are worried about their prospects under the Republicans’ replacement plan.   

The ability of hospitals to use meal period waivers was called into question by a 2015 Court of Appeal decision in Gerard v. Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center (Gerard I), which held that the provision in Wage Order 5 allowing waivers even when employees work over 12 hours was invalid.  Following two more years of litigation, we can now inform you that the three-member panel that reached the 2015 decision in Gerard I, reversed itself on March 1, 2017 in Gerard II.

An estimated $5.8 billion in cuts to the National Institutes of Health in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget has California’s top universities and medical institutions sounding the alarm.

California jumped from 26th place to 14th overall in a new scorecard on health system performance from the Commonwealth Fund.

This is the first in a yearlong series of articles in which H&HN Senior Writer Marty Stempniak will focus on crucial lessons from hospitals that have responded to the epidemic of violence plaguing our nation. It will examine mass casualty events like those that occurred in Orlando, Fla., and Dallas, as well as the seemingly intractable day-to-day cycle of violence the afflicts too many American neighborhoods.

The Republican health care bill would not affect Americans equally. Older, poorer people would see big reductions in coverage and cost increases, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. This first step in the GOP plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, would also create a modest deficit reduction.

Gundersen Health System reaches energy-independence Gundersen Health System, La Crosse Wis., has taken sustainability to its highest level by becoming energy-independent, making it the first health care system in the nation to achieve the distinction of producing more energy than it consumes.

Despite strong economic growth, California continues to struggle with high rates of child poverty. Adverse circumstances faced by young children can have long-term physical, social, and behavioral consequences—negatively affecting their future education and economic well-being.

“The CBO number reinforces our concerns about the importance of maintaining coverage for those vulnerable patients who need it,” said AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack. “As we said in our letter to Congress last week, any changes to the ACA must be guided by ensuring that we continue to provide health care coverage for the millions of people who have benefited from the law. We cannot support a bill that the CBO and others clearly indicate would reduce coverage for so many people.”

Among those who will feel the impact of President Trump’s revised travel ban are hundreds of doctors in Los Angeles County who come from the six majority-Muslim countries named in his executive order.

Steve Inskeep talks to Tom Nickels, executive vice president of the American Hospital Association, about his concerns involving the overhaul of the Affordable Care Act.

Sarah Krevans was a 20-year-old college dropout when she got her first glimpse of the dysfunction of the U.S. health care system.

The Hospital Quality Institute (HQI) of the California Hospital Association and its Regional Associations is partnering with ArborMetrix to power its Hospital Quality Intelligence Initiative, an innovative and proactive approach aiming to accelerate quality improvement across the more than 400 hospitals in the state.

Eisenhower Medical Center has updated its policy on California’s aid-in-dying law in a way officials there say better reflects the hospital’s position that doctors can assist patients in dying if they choose, just not while at the hospital.

Hospital CEOs have bigger headaches than most, as their institutions face a growing demand for services and rising costs. As a result, for the 13th year in a row, hospital managers put financial challenges at the top of a list of their leading administrative afflictions, according to a recent survey by Becker’s Hospital Review*.

The House GOP’s newly-released (and already widely maligned) Obamacare replacement plan has now made a trio of powerful medical interest group enemies: the AARP, the American Medical Association (AMA), and the American Hospital Association (AHA).

The physical health care environment is an important part of patient treatment, and it is a key factor in the success of palliative and end-of-life care. Facilities designed for people who are dealing with serious, long-term or terminal illness — in hospitals and off-site — are leading the way in the creation of spaces that support patients, families and caregivers across the care continuum.

House Republicans released on Monday legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) was named a 2016 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Enterprise Davies Award recipient for achieving improvements in patient care through the use of health information technology. CHOC is the only children’s hospital on the West Coast — and third in the country — to be honored with the award since its inception.

Eric and Brian Gantwerker spent hours shooting enemies in “Contra” and blowing themselves up in “Mega Man,” two classic video games from their youth.

Prescribed narcotic painkillers continue to fuel a nationwide opioid epidemic—nearly half of fatal overdoses in the United States involve opioids prescribed by a doctor.

The Executive Order restricting visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen has many legal, political, and moral implications. But here we will focus on the medical implications of the executive order, by considering its impact on the physician workforce in the United States and the patients that rely on these immigrant doctors. There are 14 million doctor’s appointments provided each year by physicians trained in those six countries.

If anyone needs 200 urinals in a hurry, Jan Koegler is on it.  Koegler and John Eaglesham spend their days planning for every aspect of the medical system’s response to a local disaster, as heads of Santa Barbara County Emergency Medical Services.

WHEN someone goes into cardiac arrest, survival depends on how quickly the heart can be restarted. Enter Amazon’s Echo, a voice-driven computer that answers to the name of Alexa, which can recite life-saving instructions about cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a skill taught to it by the American Heart Association.

This tiny state, with a population more rural and less diverse than the country as a whole, is embarking on an experiment that could transform the delivery of health care nationwide.

Social media. Those two words have drastically changed how we communicate over the last decade.  Information is available instantly, in real-time, with people worldwide providing status updates with pictures and videos with attached timestamps and location information. From public sentiment about national issues to backlash about a local development, from an eye witness account of an event to a review of a popular restaurant, from photos and videos of what people are up to with family and friends to how they’re feeling that day – social media media is a wealth of information.

In his first address before a joint session of Congress, President Trump last night called on legislators to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act “with reforms that expand choice, increase access, lower costs, and at the same time, provide better health care.”

After complaints that the state is doing little to stop deadly hospital outbreaks, the California Department of Public Health said this week that it would prioritize inspections at those facilities with high rates of patient infections.

Nearly 16.2 million people enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program between Oct. 1, 2013 and Dec. 31, 2016, increasing total enrollment in the programs by more than 28% since the start of the first open enrollment period for the Health Insurance Marketplace, according to a report released today by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

As the country plunged into recession between 2008 and 2012, something unexpected happened: An earlier small decline in the number of new cancer cases became a much bigger one.

At HIMSS, I listened carefully to payers, providers, patients, developers, and researchers.   Below is a distillation of what I heard from thousands of stakeholders.

Top of the list are gram-negative bugs, such as E. coli, which can cause lethal bloodstream infections and pneumonia in frail hospital patients.

Little surprises Lynda Sutherland, who has been a licensed vocational nurse for 35 years at San Mateo Medical Center. But in the past few years, Sutherland said, she’s been surprised by what’s missing: the patients who used to return again and again to the public hospital for the same ailments.

Bay Area politicians unveiled a new plan aimed at stopping a wave of hospital closures in California, including Berkeley’s Alta Bates Hospital, slated for closure as early as 2020, by giving the state Attorney General the authority to review the impact of the decision before allowing it to move forward.

Accreditation surveys play an important role in healthcare, making sure all hospitals are compliant with standards that keep patients safe. In a piece for the Wall Street Journal, Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, advocates for another type of survey to help hospitals grow beyond simply meeting regulations.

A telehealth initiative — in which emergency medical technicians use a tablet to connect patients with doctors instead of taking them to the emergency room — is reducing unnecessary visits and saving money in Houston, a new study shows.

On any given day at the Salud Clinic, Lucrecia Maas might see 22 patients. They come to the community health center tucked away in an office park here needing cavities filled, prescriptions renewed and babies vaccinated. When they start to speak, it’s rarely in English. Sometimes it’s Hindi. Or Dari. Or Hmong. Or Russian.

A majority of Americans say it is important to keep federal funding for an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor under Obamacare, even as Republicans work on repealing and replacing former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, according to a poll released on Friday.

It was believed that the Senate would be the chamber where efforts to dismantle the law faced the most challenges, but as Republicans become more divided on how to move forward with repeal, the House might be the problem child.

By the time the pregnant woman arrived at the nearest hospital with a maternity ward—90 minutes after leaving her home in Winfield, Ala.—she was ready to deliver her baby. She made it just in time, recalls Dan Avery, an obstetrician–gynecologist who tended to patients in rural Alabama and elsewhere until his recent retirement.

“Valley fever has been reported from almost every county in California, but 75 percent of cases have been found in people who live in the Central Valley and that is alarming,” Assemblyman Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, said.

Treating people for free or for very little money has been the role of community health centers across the U.S. for decades. In 2015, 1 in 12 Americans sought care at one of these clinics; nearly 6 in 10 were women, and hundreds of thousands were veterans.

The first time molecular biologist Greg Hannon flew through a tumour, he was astonished—and inspired. Using a virtual-reality model, Hannon and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK, flew in and out of blood vessels, took stock of infiltrating immune cells and hatched an idea for an unprecedented tumour atlas.

A number of programs around the country were created under the healthcare law. For example: teaching health centers.

Little surprises Lynda Sutherland, who has been a licensed vocational nurse for 35 years at San Mateo Medical Center. But in the past few years, Sutherland said, she’s been surprised by what’s missing: the patients who used to return again and again to the public hospital for the same ailments.

The millions of Americans with substance use and mental disorders who have gained insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) may be looking at no coverage, reduced benefits, or greater cost sharing if some of the congressional proposals to repeal and replace the law go into effect.

Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente reported a strong year in 2016, with growth in its operating revenue and income and 11 million members in its health system.

A new report from the AHA’s Committee on Research explores what the next generation of community health may look like as hospitals and health systems redefine themselves to keep pace with the changing health care landscape.

Conservatives have demanded a quick vote on erasing much of President Barack Obama’s health care law, with some threatening to oppose less sweeping legislation. But House Republican leaders said they were working deliberatively as the party continued its struggle to find a replacement that could pass Congress.

As the debate over the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) unfolds, CHCF continues to compile data resources and analyses of the potential impact on California.

Health care providers are under growing pressure to better manage the quality and efficiency of care, address an often bewildering array of new payment approaches, establish a continuum of care and ensure the health of a population.

This report provides health insurance estimates for 38 selected states using 2016 National Health Interview Survey data.

The red berries of a weed found in the southern United States contain an compound that can disarm a deadly superbug, according to research published Friday.

HASC has endorsed Measure H (Los Angeles County-wide measure) on the Tuesday, March 7 local election ballot.  Voters are urged to cast “no” votes on Measure S (City of Los Angeles voters) in the same election.

If Republicans in Congress scrap the Affordable Care Act, Carmina Bautista-Ortiz might have to go back to Mexico for health care. But she’d rather spend the time running the printing shop she and her husband own in Jurupa Valley, a city about 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

Many Mexican states with popular tourist destinations, including Baja California and Sonora, near the Arizona border, continue to see reports of local Zika transmissions.

Fruits and vegetables are a pivotal part of a healthful diet, but their benefits are not limited to physical health. New research finds that increasing fruit and vegetable consumption may improve psychological well-being in as little as 2 weeks.

Clinical medicine is rapidly changing in the US, with new payment models, revolutionary treatments, and, of course, political turmoil shaking things up. Trying to keep pace? Here are a dozen doctors and nurses (and one bonus comic) to follow on Twitter. They expound on politics, patients, insurers, and the future of this trillion-dollar industry.

A new blood test may be as accurate as a test requiring a painful spinal tap for differentiating Parkinson’s disease from similar disorders, according to a study published Wednesday in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Over the last few days, the Republicans’ campaign against the Affordable Care Act has undergone a subtle shift in branding. They’re no longer talking about a strategy of “repeal and replace’: The new buzzword is “repair.” 

Many Americans remain unaware of key risk factors for cancer, despite the fact that these risk factors can be reduced by making lifestyle changes, says the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR).

Rationing of healthcare services according to an individual’s ability to pay—or, as the case may be, the inability to do so—is becoming more prevalent in the United States, both in the public and private insurance spheres. Commercial payers, for example, are increasingly requiring doctors to follow a complex and time-consuming authorization process. Recent surveys show that 75% of doctors complain about this often unnecessary step

The criticism of vaccines voiced by President Trump and some other public figures is at odds with the attitudes of most Americans, who overwhelmingly support requiring public school children to be vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Thursday.

After decades of inaction, Orange County officials in recent years have finally begun to make progress on helping homeless people find a safe place to sleep for a night — the shelter carved out of an abandoned bus terminal in Santa Ana and a permanent shelter planned for Anaheim are evidence of that.

Emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and intensive care unit admissions decreased by 6%, 7.9%, and 10.6%, respectively in cancer patients paired with trained nonmedical navigators.

Everyone expects Congress to change the Affordable Care Act, but no one knows exactly how.  The uncertainty has one group of people, the homeless, especially concerned. Many received health coverage for the first time under Obamacare; now they’re worried it will disappear.

A Republican proposal to fund Medicaid through block grants could save the federal government more than $100 billion over five years, according to a new analysis released Monday.

California’s millennials continue to flood hospital emergency departments because of heroin, a trend that has increased steadily statewide and in Los Angeles and Orange counties over the past five years, according to the latest figures.

President Trump said in an interview that aired on Sunday that a replacement health care law was not likely to be ready until either the end of this year or in 2018, a major shift from promises by both him and Republican leaders to repeal and replace the law as soon as possible.

Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) was named a 2016 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Enterprise Davies Award recipient for achieving improvements in patient care through the use of health information technology.

California policymakers are facing a busy year, as a Republican-controlled Congress inches closer to rolling back key provisions of the Affordable Care Act and debate over high drug costs continues.

THE final deadline for enrolling in health insurance for 2017 under the Affordable Care Act is on Tuesday. But with so much turmoil and uncertainty surrounding the law’s future, should consumers bother to shop for coverage?

The opioid situation in the U.S. gets lots of ink in the popular press because its impact is now extended beyond health policy and into the day-to-day lives of Americans.

Only 37.9% of doctors who reported voting for Donald Trump are in favor of completely repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), widely referred to as Obamacare, according to a survey by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The revelation of serious misgivings by the people on the front lines of healthcare, published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, raises questions about the wisdom of repealing the law, as Trump and Republicans in Congress have vowed to do, without having a clear replacement plan in place.

The inauguration of Donald Trump as our next president seems likely to bring significant change to the health care system. While we at the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) can only guess how the story will play out, the intense debate highlights to us that the foundation’s core mission — improving the health and care of all Californians, especially the underserved — is more important than ever.

Congressional Republicans are meeting with the president in Philadelphia to discuss plans to dismantle the health law. They’ve set an aggressive timetable, after admitting they’re going to miss the previous one — Jan. 27 — that they for themselves.

In an unusually impassioned speech, Gov. Jerry Brown vowed Tuesday to protect California’s health care gains under Obamacare against Republican attempts in Washington, D.C., to roll them back.

President Donald Trump’s administration made explicit this weekend its commitment to an old GOP strategy for managing Medicaid, the federal-state insurance plan that covers low-income people — turning control of the program to states and capping what the federal government spends on it each year.

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, an audacious biotech billionaire1 who has pledged to “solve health care,” has been in talks with the Trump administration about the possibility of serving in a senior role overseeing the US health care system, according to individuals familiar with the discussions.

Donald J. Trump ran on a campaign promise to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. So it should not come as a surprise that he has signed an executive order urging his administration to fight it as much as possible.

California and other states could keep their federally funded insurance exchange with consumer protections intact under a proposal unveiled Monday by two Republican U.S. Senators.

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States. True to his word, on his first day in office he issued an executive order addressing the Affordable Care Act. It may not be, however, all that his supporters expected.

Fears that the new White House administration will limit Americans’ access to healthcare inspired many physicians and healthcare advocates to join thousands of protesters and take to the streets Saturday as part of the Women’s March on Washington.

The healthcare system needs to boost the resiliency in the physicians on which it inflicts ‘unnecessary trauma,’ says one advisor.

President Trump’s executive order instructing federal agencies to grant relief to constituencies affected by the Affordable Care Act has begun to reverberate throughout the nation’s health-care system, injecting further uncertainty into an already unsettled insurance landscape.

Stephanie Blythe isn’t due to give birth until April, but she already ordered a breast pump through her insurance company because she’s worried about the future of the Affordable Care Act.

A bill pending in the state legislature would require California hospitals to start reporting all infections and deaths from antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.” The measure would also require doctors to report some of these infections on death certificates.

It might be easy to diagnose a cold based on a patient’s hoarse voice, but researchers believe subtle vocal changes undetectable to the human ear can identify or predict certain difficult-to-diagnose diseases.

In the wake of the 2016 election and a changing context for healthcare decision-making, health systems that expand the scope of board dialogue will have a strategic advantage.

If you’re going to Overlook Medical Center in Summit, New Jersey, you can use an app that will direct you to the parking garage closest to the room you need to get to. Inside the hospital, the app provides GPS-precise directions — walk 20 feet and go left, take the next elevator to the fourth floor — on how to get to your appointment.

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. On one recent day, this doctor was Daniel Nadeau, wandering the cereal aisle with Allison Scott, giving her some ideas on how to feed kids who studiously avoid anything that tastes healthy.

On Wednesday, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., goes before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in his first grilling since he was nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. This isn’t an official confirmation hearing.

In July, Marin Medical Practices Concepts, a Novato provider of billing and records services, faced an unexpected bill. After hackers infected its systems with ransomware, it paid an undisclosed sum for the decryption keys that allowed its physicians to regain access to patient records. Less than two months later, two other North Bay medical providers — Prima Medical Foundation and the Marin Healthcare District — also reported the discovery of ransomware on their systems.