What’s happening: In a March 3 hearing, members of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Health pressed Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) leadership to answer questions on the impact its statewide and hospital-sector targets will have on patient care.
What else to know: During the hearing’s public comment portion, nearly 20 hospitals and health care organizations voiced their concerns with OHCA’s failure to account for the cost drivers and expenses that hospitals face and shared how these targets will negatively affect patient care.
An update on OHCA’s work was part of a routine hearing for the Assembly Budget Subcommittee. Ahead of the hearing, CHA worked to educate lawmakers on the gaps in OHCA’s current approach and the implications of its work on access to care, encouraging them to ask pointed questions about OHCA’s data collection and analysis. Lawmakers pressed OHCA on:
- Implementing guardrails to ensure the imposition of spending targets does not impede access
- How targets will impact care quality
- Factors outside of hospitals’ control the office must consider (e.g., changes to federal reimbursement from Medicare or Medicaid)
Notably, lawmakers urged OHCA to personally visit the 11 hospitals recently identified as “high cost” to better understand the challenges facing those facilities. A recording of the hearing is available on the Assembly’s website (OHCA discussion starts at 1:21:17).
Prior to the hearing, CHA launched an educational campaign on X (formerly known as Twitter), targeting Sacramento lawmakers and sharing data on overall health care spending and hospital spending per capita; to date, the ads have been viewed more than 300,000 times. This campaign will continue throughout the year.
CHA is grateful to the members that participated in this hearing. Vocal opposition from hospitals will be critical in demonstrating the impact of OHCA’s spending targets on patient care; look for more opportunities to engage in the coming weeks.
