Information in this blog came from a story which was published on California Healthline by Kellen Browning on June 12, 2017. This article looks at the effects of Obamacare, ACA, and Medicaid expansion on ER visits. It was produced by Kaiser Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health… Read More
Sutter Health and Aetna announced plans June 13, 2017 to launch a jointly owned health plan. This new collaboration will be the first hospital-insurance company joint venture in Northern California This joint venture will supposed deliver “differentiated, personalized experience for members and is designed to help lower the cost of care, resulting in competitively priced… Read More
California with democratically controlled Assembly, Senate and Governor are again considering the concept of a single payer or universal payer system. Democratically controlled Assemblies and Senates passed bills that were vetoed by Republican Governor Schwartzenegger in 2006 and 2008. Democratic Governor has yet to see a single payer bill across his desk since he has… Read More
Emergency Visits continue to increase at a rate that is greater then the population increase Source: NAMCS/NHAMCS – NCHS Reports Using Ambulatory Health Care Data… Read More
This is an opinion editorial by Ricardo Martinez, MD, the chief medical officer of Adeptus on how free-standing Emergency Departments can help improve access to emergency care. Hospital-based emergency departments in the U.S. continue to be overwhelmed with more patients each year, while the number of facilities decreases. This trend places an immense burden on… Read More
The California Department of Managed Health Care found ninety person ( 36 out of 40) healthplan/insurance company department compliance reports for 2015 contained data inaccuracies significant enough to render them essentially usable and certainly not consumer friendly. This story originally appeared in California Healthfax and then reported on in HealthLeaders. From HealthLeaders . A state… Read More
A July 2016 Health Affairs article looked at the adequacy of provider networks for plans sold through insurance Marketplaces established under the Affordable Care Act by conducting a “secret shopper” survey of 743 primary care providers from five of California’s nineteen insurance Marketplace pricing regions in the Summer of 2015. They found less than 30%… Read More
Most Americans support requiring the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine for public school children in order to protect public health. They see high preventive health benefits of such vaccines, and low risk of side effects, and they consider the benefits of the vaccine to outweigh the risks.Yet, public concerns about childhood vaccines linger in the… Read More
A study, in February 8, 2017 Mayo Clinic Proceedings, looked at whether the core motivation of physicians to help people was related to burnout. The study tried to examine a physician’s passion to help others by examining their responses on six true-false questions: “I find my work rewarding” “My work is one of the most… Read More
