Archived California Healthcare News

Poll results released Monday by the Kansas Hospital Association show a majority of Kansans continue to favor expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income adults. The statewide poll conducted in mid-February found that 62% of Kansas voters supported expanding KanCare, the state’s privatized Medicaid program, to cover approximately 150,000 non-disabled adults earning less than 138% of the federal poverty level, which is $16,242 for an individual and $33,465 for a family of four.

Legislators passed a bill this week that will expand the state\'s tax on managed care health plans but is also expected to provide more federal matching funds for the Medi-Cal program. The bill was required to maintain a flow of matching Medi-Cal funds from the federal government.

McKesson Acquires Rexall Chain

San Francisco-based McKesson Corp. has acquired the Canadian-based drugstore chain Rexall Health for $2.2 billion.

The Canadian-based Rexall operates some 470 pharmacies in both Canada and the United States.

If someone is well-educated, the odds are that he or she will marry someone with similar credentials, according to census data. And that trend has consequences when it comes to access to health care in rural areas. Rural areas have for years been facing a doctor shortage. That means for the roughly 20% of Americans who live in those areas, it’s harder to get care when it’s needed.

The number of Californians dying as a result of undergoing coronary artery bypass grafts or CABG in 2013 is stable, although slightly elevated from the prior year, according to data released last week by the Office for Statewide Health Planning and Development. The mortality rate for isolated CABG procedures in California was 2.29% in 2013 – 273 patients died out of 11,940 procedures that were performed at the 125 hospitals surveyed. That is up from the 2012 morality rate of 2.11%, but remains significantly lower than the 2.91% mortality rate that was reported in 2003, the first year OSHPD began gathering and reporting on such data.

UCSF Launches Population Health Platform

UC San Francisco has entered into a pact with New York-based CipherHealth LLC to create a platform to better monitor and manage patients with complex medical conditions.

The water crisis in Flint, Mich., is making some public health messages harder to get across — namely, in most communities, the tap water is perfectly safe. And it is so much healthier than sugary drinks. It’s a message Patty Braun, M.D., a pediatrician and oral health specialist at Denver Health, spends a lot of time on in Denver, even before lead was found in the water system of Flint.

Breaches of patient records have been an ongoing theme in recent years for both hospitals and insurers in California, as may have disclosed breaches often involving the data of hundreds of thousands patients and enrollees. Even as patient privacy is being violated, the providers still have access to actionable patient data. But what happens when an entire hospital\'s electronic medical records have been taken hostage?

A new report by the California Auditor has concluded that the state\'s health insurance exchange has to take more aggressive steps to ensure its financial solvency over the long-term and eschew the awarding of no-bid contracts. The report, issued earlier this week, concluded that Covered California\'s relative youth may be a strike against it. It noted that its revenue projections are based on enrollment forecasts, which vary based on several scenarios.