Archived California Healthcare News

Employment rates for people with a serious mental illness are dismally low and getting worse, according to a report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Just 17.8 percent of people receiving public mental health services were employed in 2012 – down from 23 percent in 2003. That’s an unemployment rate of more than 80%.

Some purchasers of healthcare insurance via Covered California may have had issues with the provider networks of the health plans they selected, but the exchange itself is putting the finishing touches on a list of essential providers available to a large number of enrollees. Known as essential community providers, or ECPs, the list was mandated under the Affordable Care Act as a way to address disparities in care based on income, geography and other demographics. It is intended to ensure that people who have become newly insured under the ACA are able to remain with the community providers after they obtain coverage.

The rates of certain types of sexually transmitted diseases rose substantially in California last year, according to data from the Department of Public Health.

DMHC, Blue Shield Disclose Breach Of Provider Data

Blue Shield of California and the Department of Managed Health Care were involved in a data breach involving the Social Security numbers of about 18,000 physicians and other healthcare providers.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in a case brought by home healthcare aides in Illinois casts doubt on labor agreements between such workers and state governments in nine other states. It also closes off—or at least complicates—one of labor’s clearest paths to reversing a decades-long trend of declining ranks and shrinking clout.

Healthcare Compensation News will devote a large part of each issue to healthcare payment data and trends in various regions of the United States, with a focus on not-for-profit hospitals. Why hospitals? Because they pose complex financial questions seen in few other facets of healthcare delivery.

What Some C-Suite Executives Earn

 

Tri-State Hospital Chief Operating Officer Average Total Compensation:

$416,036

Median Total Compensation:

A ballot initiative that would have capped what not-for-profit hospitals in California could pay its executives was officially shelved by its sponsor in lieu of a closer alliance with the state\'s leading hospital lobby. The Service Employees International Union-Healthcare Workers West had been gathering signatures for the initiative to place it on November\'s ballot. It would have capped hospital executive pay at $475,000 a year. That\'s significantly higher than the average base compensation for hospital executives in California, which is more than $500,000 per year, and approaches $750,000 when bonuses and other additional pay is factored in.

A bill in the state Legislature that would allow health plan enrollees to opt-out of mandatory mail-order prescription drug plans has raised the ire of a lobbying group for that sector, claiming it would lead to Californians forfeiting nearly $2 billion a year in cost savings next year. The bill, AB 2418, is in hearings in front of the Senate Health Committee this week after being passed by the Assembly 75-1 late last month. Authored by Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, it would allow any enrollee in a health plan that mandates mail-ordered prescriptions to be able to opt out starting in 2016.