Archived California Healthcare News

A new study by researchers at UC San Francisco has concluded that African-American patients in many parts of California are more likely than whites to have their ambulance diverted to another hospital due to nearby emergency room crowding.

She didn’t want to spend the rest of her days seeing doctors, the 91-year-old woman confessed to Kevin Newfield, M.D., as he treated a deep wound on her arm. “You don’t have to, but you have to tell me what you do want,” Newfield replied. “I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of being 106,” she told the surgeon and her daughter, who was in the room with them.

Aetna and Cigna inked deals in early February with drugmaker Novartis that offer the insurers rebates tied to how well a pricey new heart failure drug works to cut hospitalizations and deaths. If the $4,500-a-year drug meets targets, the rebate goes down. Doesn’t work so well? The insurers get a bigger payment. In another approach, pharmacy benefit firm Express Scripts this year began paying drugmakers a special negotiated rate for some cancer drugs — to reward the use of the medicines for the specific cancers for which they have the most demonstrated effectiveness.

For years, leading health experts have said the way to improve healthcare quality and lower its cost is to emphasize prevention over treatment and encourage closer coordination among medical providers caring for a patient. Those goals are at the core of the Affordable Care Act, which aims to push medical delivery in that direction.

Insurance Department Issues New Provider Network Regulations

The California Department of Insurance has issued new regulations intended to strengthen the provider networks offered by health plans.

A bustling economy. Record-low unemployment. A ballooning heroin problem. That’s how Mayor Svante Myrick describes Ithaca, N.Y., where he hopes to open the nation’s first safe injection facility — a place where heroin users could shoot their illegal drugs under medical supervision and without fear of arrest.

California\'s Office of the Patient Advocate has released its annual report card for the state\'s physician groups, and has added an entirely new layer to the reporting by ranking the groups based on the cost of care. For this year, the report cards\' four-star rating system includes what a year of care from each group would cost for both the insurer and the patient, the latter in terms of co-payments and deductibles. The costs range from below $3,158 to more than $4,774. Medical groups in 39 of the state\'s 58 counties are included.

The California Department of Public Health has fined the Holiday Manor Care nursing home in Winnetka in connection with the death of a patient in 2014 records show.

Due to inaccurate information provided by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), Payers & Providers incorrectly reported in its Feb. 25 issue that Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside did not report a potential breach of patient health information to that agency. After additional inquires were made by Payers & Providers, the CDPH confirmed that Tri-City reported the breach within the period of time required under California statute.