What’s happening: The Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) board meeting yesterday focused on high costs in the Monterey region from a consumer and purchaser perspective. Ahead of the meeting, CHA submitted comments urging the office to look closely at the factors driving regional differences in health care spending.
What else to know: Separately, last week, OHCA finalized changes to the state cost and market impact review regulations, with immediate effect.
The OHCA board met in Monterey — the first time a board meeting was held outside of Sacramento — to assess conditions in the local health care market.
Representatives of public purchasers from Covered California and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System testified that their health care costs are higher in the region. Both representatives pointed to hospital prices as a driver of affordability challenges. The board also heard testimony from an academic, who focused specifically on hospital spending and attributed high costs to market concentration.
CHA submitted a comment letter ahead of the meeting, highlighting how regional differences in hospital spending across California are driven by variability in local costs of living and population health needs.
In addition, the board approved the nomination of Travis Lakey, chief financial officer at Mayers Memorial Healthcare District, to fill an empty slot on the OHCA Advisory Committee intended for a hospital representative. The board took no other action.
In a separate action, on Aug. 22, the Office of Administrative Law approved changes to the cost and market impact review regulations, with immediate effect. The approved changes are largely identical to what OHCA previously proposed, doing the following:
- Requiring parent companies of health care entities to file notices of material change transactions
- Allowing health care entities to withdraw information for which a request for confidentiality was denied
- Expanding the list of factors considered by OHCA to include whether a transaction would impact compliance with the spending target(s)
- Extending various provisions to fully integrated delivery systems
Contact Ben Johnson, CHA vice president, policy at bjohnson@calhospital.org with questions or feedback.
