U.S. consumers still like to see a doctor, but if they have to wait, they are happy to see a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant. Two studies out this week indicate both patients and doctors are "open to a greater role" to primary care professionals who are not medical doctors at a time when physicians are in short supply and doctors will become even more scarce when the Affordable Care Act broadens health care benefits in less than seven months. The law will bring additional coverage for millions of Americans along with an influx of business to doctors that they may not be able to handle.
The use of health information exchanges (HIEs) in ambulatory care is unlikely to produce significant cost savings through reductions in rates of testing, a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) concludes. But the researchers emphasized that there may be other economic benefits of HIE from "downstream outcomes of better informed, higher quality care." The hypothesis of the study -- based on earlier predictions by health policy experts -- was that if physicians had online access to results of tests recently ordered by other doctors, they wouldn't order those tests again for the same patients. If that proved to be true, according to the hypothesis, there should be some cost savings.
Thousands of doctors, nurses, unionized health care workers and Medi-Cal patients flocked to the Capitol on Tuesday to protest possible cuts to the Medi-Cal program. Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed budget calls for a 10 percent reduction in payment to Medi-Cal providers, a move that opponents say would reduce the poorest patients' access to health care. So far, Brown has shown no signs of backing down from the proposed cut. The "We Care for California Coalition," which includes health care providers, insurance firms and associations representing doctors and hospitals, organized more than 100 buses to bring protesters from across California to the rally.
When a 2014 portion of the Affordable Care Act comes into effect, employers will be able to use financial rewards and penalties to encourage healthier behaviors. Last week the Obama administration released its final rules regarding these employer-based wellness programs. Still, critics are concerned that an annual premium adjustment isn't likely to change behavior, and will just end up penalizing those with poorer health. According to Dr. Kevin Volpp, director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, it isn't as simple as just paying someone for doing the right thing.
President Obama's healthcare law is under attack in the courts even as the administration sprints toward full implementation. Despite surviving a stiff challenge at the Supreme Court last year, some of the law's biggest provisions remain at risk from legal challenges. One set of lawsuits accuses the Internal Revenue Service of illegally implementing new subsidies to help people buy insurance. Separately, more than 60 lawsuits have been filed challenging the law's mandate for health plans to cover birth control. A loss for the administration on the contraception mandate would undermine a key selling point for the law that Democrats used to court women in the 2012 elections.
(Reuters) - Fourteen Republican-led states that oppose expanding Medicaid under President Barack Obama's health reform will leave 3.6 million of their poorest adult residents uninsured, at a cost of $9.4 billion per year by 2017, researchers said on Monday. The findings, published in the journal Health Affairs, could point to a larger-than-expected impact from the bitter political feud engulfing a major provision of the healthcare reform law due to take full effect next year. The law calls for Medicaid coverage to be expanded to people with earnings of up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, but a Supreme Court decision last year allowed states to decide whether to participate.