Broadwater Health Center in Townsend is in talks with Billings Clinic that could create a relationship between the two health care providers. "We're just kind of in the shopping stages, if you will, to see what Billings Clinic has done for other communities," said Kyle Hopstad, the hospital's administrator. Jim Duncan, president of the Billings Clinic Foundation, agrees that talks are in their infancy and said no agreements have been reached. "We have agreed to visit with them about what ways Billings Clinic could help," he said. Billings Clinic's relationship with other hospitals and clinics varies, Duncan said, and is tailored to the individual needs of each institution.
If Lee Mullins lived in Pittsburgh, he could buy mid-level health coverage for his family for $940 a month. If he lived in Beverly Hills, Calif., he would pay $1,405. But Mullins, who builds custom swimming pools, lives in southwest Georgia. Here, a similar health plan for his family of four costs $2,654 a month. This largely agrarian pocket of Georgia, where peanuts and pecans are major crops and hunters bag alligators up to 10 feet long, is one of the most expensive places in the nation to buy health insurance through the new online marketplaces created by the federal health law.
A state investigation has found that key errors were made by San Francisco General Hospital and the San Francisco Sheriff's Department after a disoriented woman went missing last fall. Lynne Spalding, 57, disappeared from her hospital room in September of last year. Her body was found weeks later in a locked hospital staircase. According to an investigation report by state health inspectors from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hospital staff made errors in Spalding's care including ignoring a doctor's order that Spalding should be monitored at all times. Spalding was suffering from an infection and was disoriented when she was admitted. Two days before she disappeared nurses were ordered to "NEVER leave patient unattended," the report said.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to increase access to health insurance by: 1) requiring states to expand Medicaid eligibility to people with incomes less than 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) ($19,530 for a family of three in 2013), with the cost of expanded eligibility mostly paid by the federal government; 2) establishing online insurance "exchanges" with regulated benefit structures where people can comparison shop for insurance plans; and 3) requiring most uninsured people with incomes above 138 percent FPL to purchase insurance or face financial penalties, while providing premium subsidies for those up to 400 percent of FPL.
The Obama administration on Thursday reported what it called encouraging results from efforts to reduce healthcare costs and improve the quality of care for more than 5 million Medicare beneficiaries under Obamacare. As part of President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, the efforts center around more than 360 accountable care organizations (ACOs), which are networks of doctors, hospitals and other providers specially organized to help move Medicare away from traditional fee-for-service medicine. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said preliminary data show that the ACOs produced $380 million in savings vis-a-vis traditional Medicare in 2012 by giving doctors and other healthcare providers the incentive to focus on improved outcomes for patients instead of fees from tests and services.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman, whose legislative record has made him one of the country's most influential liberal lawmakers for four decades, announced Thursday that he will retire from his Westside seat, the latest in a wave of departures that is remaking the state's long-stable congressional delegation. During a congressional career that began when Gerald R. Ford was president, Waxman became one of the Democratic Party's most prolific and savvy legislators, focusing on issues related to healthcare and the environment. He played a central role — sometimes over opposition within his own party — in passing laws that dramatically cut air pollution, helped reduce smoking, expanded Medicaid coverage for the poor, reduced pesticides in food, made generic drugs more widely available, helped AIDS patients, promoted the development of drugs for rare diseases and improved federal regulation of nursing homes.