Archived California Healthcare News

The California Department of Public Health on Wednesday levied 10 penalties against seven hospitals for medical errors that killed or gravely endangered patients in 2011. A department official also disclosed that the rate of adverse events in California\'s hospitals has yet to stabilize – the first step in their moving toward a consistent downward trend.

The Santa Monica-based advocacy group Consumer Watchdog has called for random drug testing of physicians and several other reforms in the wake of published reports linking dozens of California doctors to the drug overdoses of their patients. Consumer Watchdog wrote Gov. Jerry Brown and the chairs of the Assembly and Senate business and professions committees in the wake of a recent multi-part investigation by the Los Angeles Times into physicians who may have been prescribing medications without heeding potential patient harm. The newspaper was able to link 91 doctors to at least three patients each who died of prescription drug overdoses.

Ohio Will Expand Medicaid Program

Ohio Gov. John Kasich's budget proposal includes the Buckeye State opting into the Medicaid expansion as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Walgreen retail clinic subsidiary Take Care Health Systems has entered into an agreement with the Community Health Network to expand the amount of care available to the latter\'s members in Indiana. Under the agreement, Community Health\'s patients will be able to have greater access to Take Care\'s clinics via expanded hours; Take Care\'s nurse practitioners will be able to communicate more easily with Community Health\'s physicians; and there will be an overall improvement in the coordination of care between the two providers.

Legislature Convenes Special Session To Address ACA Requirements

The California Legislature convened in a special session earlier this week to craft new laws that will be used to expand the Medi-Cal program and streamline enrollment.

Although Health Net completed the last quarter of last year barely in the black and its overall revenue is flat, 2012 earnings were solid, and it is expected to make more gains during 2013.

The Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act. The building of the Health Insurance Marketplaces. President Obama’s reelection. These were some of the events that defined the healthcare industry during 2012. What will 2013 bring? Payers & Providers set out to answer this question in webinar held on Dec. 19, 2012. The webinar featured Steven T. Valentine, President of The Camden Group; Henry Loubet, Chief Strategy Officer for Keenan; and Peter Boland, President of Boland Healthcare. Trends in delivery systems, regulatory reform, and technology were all examined by the speakers. While the webinar was focused on California, its lessons apply nationwide.

Nearly 40% of hospital-based general practitioners who are responsible for overseeing patients’ care say they juggle unsafe patient workloads at least once a week, according to a study published Monday as a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine. In the study, researchers at Johns Hopkins University invited nearly 900 attending physicians, known as hospitalists, to complete an online survey that measured various characteristics, including the number of patients they thought they could manage safely during a typical shift. Hospitalists are the physicians who coordinate a patient’s care and medications among various specialists while they’re in the hospital and oversee their transition home.

IEHP Launches Medical Home Initiative

Inland Empire Health Plan has launched medical homes for 12,500 patients at 10 community clinics in Riverside County.