In Brief: Job Forecast Fairly Bullish On Growth; CMS Says Spending Increases Lowest Ever Recorded
Job Forecast Fairly Bullish On Healthcare Growth
A new economic forecast for California by Chapman University concludes that the state’s healthcare sector job growth will increase at a 3.6% annual clip between now and 2020. That would mean an additional 498,000 healthcare jobs created in California between last year and the end of this decade.
Chapman said the job growth was fueled in part by the increased in insured under the Affordable Care Act.
Although the projected growth is fairly modest, Chapman researchers were optimistic that growth would be long-term.
“Now 64 months old, the current recovery is slightly longer than the average duration of past recoveries, but its accumulated growth of 12.5% pales in comparison to recoveries that led to total growth of 40% before encountering recessionary forces. This suggests that the current recovery has legs.
Chapman also forecast a 2.1% growth in pharmaceutical and biotech jobs.
CMS Says Spending Growth At Historic Lows
Healthcare spending growth has continued at its historically slow pace last year, ticking up just 3.6% in 2013, according to new data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Since 2009, at the depths of the Great Recession, annual spending has crept up no more than 4.1% annually, and the 2013 increase is the lowest level ever recorded.
CMS officials attributed last year's slow growth to a variety of reasons. The Affordable Care Act had a big impact: Private health insurance spending dropped from a 4% growth rate in 2012 to 2.8% last year. 2013. Medicare spending also slowed down, to 3.4 percent last year from 4 percent in 2012, due not only to the ACA but the sequestration spending cuts. Hospital spending also dropped, but still grew 4.3% in 2013, compared to the 5.7% clip it reported in 2012.
It is unsure whether that historically low spending growth will continue as the U.S. continues to emerge from the recession. "The key question is whether health spending growth will accelerate once economic conditions improve significantly," said Micah Hartman, a statistician in the Office of the Actuary at CMS. "Historical evidence suggests it will."
CDPH’s Chapman Will Leave Agency
Ron Chapman, M.D., director of the California Department of Public Health, has announced he will leave the agency at the end of next month.
Chapman, who has served in the top post since 2011, announced his resignation in an email to staff earlier this week, the Sacramento Bee reported. He does not have another post lined up.
Chapman did not give a specific reason for his departure, but the CDPH has come under criticism regarding its oversight of nursing home. The agency, which also regulates hospitals, has had some challenges enforcing administrative penalties and fines due to time lags in meting out discipline, records and officials say.
