Covered California is seeking stakeholder feedback on its efforts to promote accountability and support delivery system improvements. In a recently released request for information, Covered California solicits questions and suggestions in four key areas.
As hospitals actively engage with community partners to comply with a new homeless patient discharge planning law, members of the Legislature heard from advocates last week about the need for a broad transformation in the way California addresses homelessness.
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced a new Part D Payment Modernization model, available through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, for Part D and Medicare Advantage (MA) drug plans beginning in January 2020.
Yesterday, CHA submitted comments on the Office of the National Coordinator’s (ONC) draft strategy to reduce regulatory and administrative burden related to health information technology and electronic health record (EHR) use.
A talented young physician was concerned about her job at Michigan Medicine, where we both work. She thought she might have to leave the organization because she could not meet mandatory early-morning start times for procedures or outpatient visits. She was especially discouraged by colleagues who said her attitude reflected a lack of commitment and “was emblematic of her generation’s fixation on lifestyle.”
Her problem did involve commitment — to her two children, who needed to be dropped off at school. She and her husband had decided to prioritize his medical career, and between his clinical and academic schedules, she was the glue that held their young family together.
As physicians, we are taught that our duty is to do no harm. A proposed rule by the Department of Homeland Security may lead to harm by having the opposite of its intended effect.
The proposed “public charge” rule would make it harder for legal immigrants in this country to extend a visa or qualify for a green card if they have used public benefits. The rule could harm low-income workers by forcing them to choose between accessing vital work supports—basic health coverage, food and housing services that keep them healthy and able to work—and maintaining their immigration status. Their families could be affected, too.
“Soumya, I’ve been having excruciating back pain. It’s really bothering me, so I’m going to the Emergency Department.”
I received this voicemail from one of our respected division faculty members as I started my weekly visit to the nursing home as a Geriatric Medicine fellow. Five months earlier, we had learned that the young daughter of two other faculty members had an inoperable brain tumor. Six weeks earlier, the night of November 8, 2016, I was glued to the television, white as a sheet. A first-generation immigrant woman from India, I watched as a man who boasted about sexually assaulting women, and who started his political career calling non-white immigrants rapists and criminals, became president-eElect of the United States.
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There’s no shortage of contentious issues in American public life and few as thorny as healthcare policy. We will soon spend 20% of our gross domestic product on health, and yet we hardly seem to agree on the best path forward.Making matters worse, this tremendous investment of resources often fails to reach the places that require it most. Think about the savings that would accrue if we spent more of those resources addressing the social determinants of health, which include all aspects of one’s background.