Archived California Healthcare News

Community Health Centers Receive $29 Million In Federal Grants

Forty-eight community health centers throughout California have received $29 million worth of grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Brenda Hummel’s 7-year-old daughter Andrea was born with severe epilepsy. Like many children with significant diseases or disabilities, she has health insurance through Medicaid. Hummel navigated Iowa’s Medicaid resources for years to find just the right doctors and care for her daughter. But now Iowa’s governor, Republican Terry Branstad, is moving full speed ahead with a plan to put private companies in charge of managing Medicaid’s services, and that has Hummel worried. Everywhere in the Hummel household, there are signs of just how much care Andrea needs. Her bedroom, for instance, looks like a typical kid’s room — stuffed animals, a frog light that shines images on the ceiling, and a butterfly mobile. But the bed stands out – the head of the bed goes up and down so Andrea can have her head elevated when she sleeps.

Kansas is in the bottom half of the class on a new report from the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. The report, “How Do You Measure Up,” judges states on nine policies related to cancer control and prevention. It uses a traffic signal color scheme to indicate state legislative progress: green for a positive trend, red for serious shortcomings and yellow for somewhere between.

The perception that not-for-profit hospitals provide more in community benefits than for-profit institutions may be inaccurate, according to a new study by UC San Francisco researchers. UCSF examined the financials of 264 hospitals in California, 200 of which were not-for-profits. The Golden State was particularly handy for the study because it is the only state that requires both not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals to submit charity care and uncompensated care data to regulators.

Blue Shield Owes $82.8 Million In Rebates

Blue Shield of California says it owes $82.8 million in rebates to health plan enrollees that were accrued in 2014.

Thousands of Kansans soon will be receiving letters notifying them that their electronic health records may have been compromised.

The letters are from a Fort Wayne, Ind., company that provides an online patient portal called NoMoreClipboard used by 18 Kansas hospitals and at least half a dozen clinics. Most are small-town hospitals in western and southeastern Kansas. The largest is in Hutchinson.

Bedeviled by regulatory headaches in the past year, Blue Shield of California is struggling with a new issue: Paying the beneficiaries of life insurance policies who had no idea coverage had been in effect. The San Francisco-based medical insurer also sells life insurance, and it confirmed to Payers & Providers earlier this month that it is dealing with the issue of unpaid claims.

Bellflower Hospital Reopened

The former Bellflower Medical Center has been reopened and renamed the Los Angeles Community Hospital at Bellflower.

It’s a sweltering Monday afternoon, and in the emergency room of Truman Medical Centers near downtown Kansas City, Mo., a patient complains of excruciating abdominal pain. The attending physician advises her there’s only so much he can do.