Hospital Care in the Crosshairs
Over the past couple of weeks, as federal and state budget proposals have come into sharper focus, the details are shaping up to be grim for hospitals and the patients who rely on them.
Over the past couple of weeks, as federal and state budget proposals have come into sharper focus, the details are shaping up to be grim for hospitals and the patients who rely on them.
Health care — one of our most fundamental needs as human beings — is at an inflection point.
Every spring for the past 50 years, the nation has come together to recognize the special place hospitals hold in their communities — the lives they save, the families they support, the unimaginable challenges they help people face and conquer, year after year.
Earlier this week, members of Congress returned to Washington, D.C., from their spring recess, with both the House of Representatives and the Senate laser-focused on delivering a 2026 domestic spending bill to President Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, the state’s Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) Board voted 5-0 to drastically cut how much seven California hospitals can spend to care for patients; this comes on top of below-inflation spending cuts for all hospitals that OHCA had already put in place.
In April 1974, President Richard Nixon signed Presidential Proclamation 4288, creating National Volunteer Week. Every year since then, each president has issued a new proclamation commemorating this celebration of those who give freely of their time to help others.
A report released earlier this week by the well-respected and nonpartisan RAND Corp. underscores an alarming fact that hospital leaders have been saying for years: The viability of hospital-based emergency care is at risk after facing epidemics, a pandemic, increased patient acuity and complexity, and unsustainable declines in payment.
Last week, and on schedule, the state Department of Health Care Services submitted the proposed model for the next iteration of the hospital fee program to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
This week, California’s congressional representatives returned from their home districts to a gray and gloomy Washington, D.C.
Time is running short.