Archived California Healthcare News

California voters will be asked to weigh in this November on a hospital financing measure so politically and financially complicated that they might be tempted to avoid it altogether. Proposition 52 would make permanent the “Hospital Quality Assurance Fee,” which the state collects from private hospitals to help levrage additional federal matching funds for Medi-Cal.

A new study by UCLA researchers has found that a program supporting oral care for young low-income children has dramatically increased the number of visits for preventative dental care. The data from the Los Angeles-based dental homes project comes as more research indicates that oral care is tied into a patient\'s overall health and that such services are needed both early and later in life.

The California Association of Physician Groups (CAPG) has mostly praised the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).

Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has established a full orthopedics department to fulfill clinical demand.

Two big insurance mergers. Two different regulatory takes. That is what is occurring in California, as the state Department of Insurance tries to block the merger between Anthem and Cigna, while the Department of Managed Health Care has approved another merger between Humana and Aetna.

In another sign of growing frustration with rising health costs, aerospace giant Boeing Co. has agreed to contract directly for employee benefits with a major health system in Southern California, bypassing the conventional insurance model.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has been named an Ebola treatment center by the California Department of Public Health. The CDPH has given Cedars-Sinai a $3.25 million federal grant to purchase equipment to support its work as an Ebola treatment center.

As healthcare consolidation accelerates nationwide, a new study shows that hospital prices in two of California’s largest health systems were 25 percent higher than at other hospitals around the state...

The state Senate last week rejected legislation that would have required medical practitioners to notify their patients if they were on probation for serious infractions. The bill’s supporters said consumers were ill-served by the Senate’s decision...