Operational efficiencies? Facility upgrades? General acute-care
or limited service hospitals? Lott on Health Care looks at
how—and where—patients receive care.
Jim Lott is the executive vice president of the Hospital
Association of Southern California where he is responsible for
health care policy development, advocacy, and association
communications for hospitals serving Los Angeles, Orange, San
Bernardino, Riverside, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties.
This will be my last post, as I am leaving HASC at the end of
next month. Health is fine, work is great, just moving on
to the next chapter of my life, which will be in health care…what
else would I do?
I have enjoyed writing this blog, and I thank all of you who have
told me that you like reading what I write. I will truly
miss doing this.
Again, I’m still at HASC until May 31, so drop me a line or
call. After I leave, you may reach me on my cell at
213-324-3262 or by email at JLottSr@me.com.
Last week, federal and state officials released their
long-anticipated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) implementing a
three-year effort to lower costs and improve the coordination of
medical care provided to nearly half a million California seniors
who are enrolled in both Medicare and Medi-Cal. If approved
by the feds, passive enrollment of program beneficiaries over a
12-to-18-month period will start in seven counties (Orange,
Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Mateo, Alameda and
Santa Clara) in October. What this means is that the
dual-eligible program beneficiaries
A physician specialist that I see regularly ordered a diagnostic
test to check on my medical condition. He explained to me
that two tests were available and he disclosed which of the two
he preferred. Of course, I did what most patients do—I
chose his preference. Later I would learn that his
preference cost almost twice as much as the other test and that I
would have to pay more than $500 for the part of the bill not
paid by my health plan. I hasten to add that I am not upset
with my doctor. Rather, I am ticked off at myself and my
health plan for how this play
A belief I regard highly is, “That government is best which
governs least,” a quote historians have attributed equally to
Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Jefferson. Mind you, the
operative meaning or the verb infinitive in the quote is “to
govern.” Few who have been paying attention to the gridlock in
our nation’s capital give high marks to our elected
representatives for meeting this core job requirement. In
fact, one credible poll gives Congress an approval rating of only
14 percent, with the Obama Administration receiving only slightly
higher marks.
We’ve all heard this one. When asked about Congress or our
state legislature, voters give low performance ratings to both
followed by, “but my representative is a good guy.” It
would seem that the same holds true about constraining the growth
of health care costs.
I learned what that meant when as a third grader my mother moved
me to a private Catholic school from an economically depressed
inner-city public school where 70 percent of the students never
made it to high school graduation and where the majority of those
who did were sub-literate.
No U.S. resident under the age of 27 can say that he or she has
experienced a year of life where the average weather temperature
was below that of the previous year. Climate change, or to
be more accurate, global warming, is real.
With men outpacing women, almost two-thirds of adults in our
country are overweight, and slightly more than one-in-three are
clinically obese, meaning that they have a body mass index (BMI)
greater than 30. With boys outpacing girls, almost one-in-five of
our children are obese. Clearly, males lag behind females
in maintaining healthy weight profiles. It is also important to
note the positive correlation between low socioeconomic status
and obesity.
The federal health care reform law enacted in 2010 – the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) – excluded illegal
immigrants from eligibility for inclusion under its expanded
health insurance coverage provisions. Now it would appear that
health coverage for these immigrants will not be in the
immigration reform plan the White House and Congress will likely
hammer out later this year.
The December 31st
Ventura County Star news report that Community Memorial
Health System (CMHS) will no longer hire people who use
tobacco gets my vote for the best New Year’s resolution made by a
health care organization.By taking this bold action, CMHS, which
runs two hospitals and a network of clinics in west Ventura
County, joins but a handful of providers of hospital care in
California, if not the nation, to move beyond on-campus smoking
bans with this more restrictive
Once a year for the past seven years, our community of hospitals
in Southern California comes together to honor the most giving of
themselves, the laborers of the planet. Okay, so we are a
little biased about the people working in our hospitals. Here are
but five of the extraordinary people we honored last week along
with their stories.
Our first award went to a nurse and social worker on the front
lines of a busy hospital who teamed up to fix a problem that
plagues emergency rooms everywhere … frequent fliers.
In new health care landscape where inpatient volumes are falling
and Medicare, Medi-Cal and commercial payments to hospitals are
flattening and/or decreasing, radical change and major financial
investment are required by hospitals while facing the most
problematic economic outlook in 20 years.
Rising health insurance premiums are a concern for consumers and
their medical care givers. Both want to preserve access to high
quality, affordable health care. However, empowering a government
agency to decide what health insurance premiums will be, as
proposed by Assembly Bill 52, is the wrong solution to this very
real problem.
Within a year or two, thousands of retail clinics may be hard-by
the neighborhood Starbucks or nestled inside Targets, Wal-Marts
and major pharmacy chains – as ubiquitous to the 21st century
American shopping experience as pre-washed jeans and organic
produce.
In California, hospital construction is also being spurred by SB
1953, the mandated seismic upgrades to the state’s acute care
facilities that could cost as much as $60 billion to complete. A
recent report by RAND concluded that “only a fraction of
California hospitals will be able to marshal the financial,
organizational and logistical resources to carry out large-scale
construction programs to meet the law’s deadlines.”
Hospital construction bills are being driven upward not only by
the expected red tape, but by a nearly perfect storm of other
factors: high demand for building materials, both in the United
States and developing countries, such as China; experienced
building contractors and subcontractors reluctant to take on the
complexities of healthcare construction; pressure from labor
unions; and a more consumer-friendly bent toward designing
larger, costlier private rooms versus the semi-private rooms of
the past.
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not
quite enough time,” once said the late Leonard Bernstein,
renowned composer and orchestra conductor.
California’s emergency medical services (EMS) system is in
critical condition, most industry analysts would agree. In many
parts of the state, hospital emergency department (ED)
overcrowding, patients leaving without being treated, ambulance
diversion, and paramedic downtimes caused by ED saturation have
reached crisis levels.
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