Not content to wait for the state budget to pass in late June, the Department of Human Services is alerting about 200,000 Medicaid recipients—many with developmental or mental disabilities—that they will be required to enroll in an HMO. Gov. Christie's administration anticipates the move will save $41 million in the budget year that begins July 1. But at least one advocacy group is worried people with complicated medical histories will be forced to find new doctors or new drugs, disrupting their care. "We understand about shared sacrifice. But the time frame is too rapid for people to really understand what's happening and to make a choice," said Beverly Roberts a director at The Arc of New Jersey. "There are concerns about people with the most complex conditions. They have to pick one HMO for all their needs."
Donald Berwick writes in Friday's Wall Street Journal, "In recent weeks, our country has continued an important conversation about our fiscal future. Washington doesn't agree on much, but we all agree that we need to reduce our deficit and debt. Reforming Medicare and reducing health-care spending is crucial to meeting that goal. But there's a right way to reform Medicare and a wrong way."
U.S. Sen. David Vitter continues to lambaste the development of the University Medical Center, questioning a decision to allow a consultant to reconsider some of its financial projections for the planned Charity Hospital successor. In a letter Thursday to UMC Board Chairman Bobby Yarborough, the senator criticized Yarborough's decision to cancel a May 5 board meeting at which Kaufman Hall & Associates of Illinois was scheduled to present findings that call the current 424-bed plan excessive, a complaint that Vitter has trumpeted for months. That presentation is now scheduled for June 2. Among the variables at issue is the number of insured patients that LSU physicians will be able steer to the new teaching hospital. Kaufman Hall's initial estimate pegs the number at 650-680 annually, about a third of what LSU has previously estimated. That variable is a key part of the state's plan to make the Charity successor an elite academic medical enterprise, beyond the more simplistic safety-net model of the old hospital and its temporary replacement, Interim LSU Public Hospital.
Despite a strong push-back from the medical community, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is sticking with a controversial plan to tax hospital income, one the state acknowledges will take a $7.4 million bite out of Greenwich Hospital's net annual revenues. Gian-Carl Casa, undersecretary for legislative affairs at the state Office of Policy and Management, emphasized that the graduated levy has been replaced with a flat tax of 4.6% Hospitals would have paid 5% tax on the first $50 million in revenues under Malloy's original plan, with the levy increasing to 7.5% on the next $250 million in revenues and finally to 10% for income over $300 million. Greenwich Hospital estimates that its annual operating gain is currently $4.2 million. Connecticut would become eligible for $150 million in federal funds that the state can put toward deficit-reduction as a result of the hospital tax plan, which would no longer exempt Medicare payments from the levy.
Dr. Loring Rue, Chief of Trauma Surgery at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital, answers questions about his department's response after deadly tornadoes slammed through Alabama.
An e-patient consent system will soon become reality if the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has its way. According to a listing on the Federal Business Opportunities website, ONC is currently seeking a vendor to conduct market research that will identify patient concerns as they design an e-consent pilot that will foster patient trust. To achieve this, the vendor is asked to partner with medical facilities that are exchanging health information electronically, develop a way to obtain patient participation, identify key pieces of information relating to the exchange of health information and patient choice, and evaluate consumer understanding regarding patient consent to share their health information. The development of an electronic patient consent system is a step that ONC believes will inspire patient trust as their medical records increasingly becomes computerized and electronically exchanged among healthcare professionals.