PA to Invest in Philadelphia Community Served by Safety-Net Hospitals
Pennsylvania will spend more than $4 million on health-related services in the North Philadelphia Enterprise Zone, an area in which nearly 13 percent of the state’s Medicaid population resides.
This area is served almost exclusively by Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals and recently suffered a major loss when one of those providers, Hahnemann University Hospital, closed its doors. According to a SNAP analysis, more than 50 percent of the patients previously served by Hahnemann will now turn for care to SNAP members Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (18.3 percent), Pennsylvania Hospital (11.3 percent), the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (nine percent), Penn Presbyterian Medical Center (4.7 percent), Jefferson Health Northeast (4.1 percent), and Mercy Hospital Philadelphia (3.2 percent).
The $4 million will be spent on expanded home visiting services for families with children, eviction prevention assistance for low-income families, and programs that help residents move from public assistance to jobs.
Learn more in the Philadelphia Business Journal article “State Invests in North Philadelphia’s Health Enterprise Zone.”
Pennsylvania rates will rise an average of four percent for individual plans and 9.7 percent for small groups, the state Insurance Department has announced. All insurers that offered plans in 2019 will do so again in 2020 and the exchange will include a new insurer and increased choice in some of the state’s 67 counties. Beginning in 2020, residents of only six counties will have only a single insurer offering individual plans.
The Department of Human Services bulletin outlines the purpose of the new PDL, provides background information, and describes how the PDL was developed and will work. In addition, it lists the past Medical Assistance Bulletins rendered obsolete by the new bulletin and describes the prior authorization procedures that will be employed when the new program takes effect on January 1, 2020.
Included in this month’s edition are articles about:
Earlier this year, the Department of Human Services announced its intention to implement a preferred drug list in the state’s Medicaid program. That PDL would apply to both the fee for service and managed care Medicaid programs.
Today, Lyft is working with approximately 35 state Medicaid programs while Uber, at least so far, participates only in Arizona’s program.
Instead, patients previously served by Hahnemann University Hospital, a Pennsylvania safety-net hospital that served especially large numbers of Medicaid and uninsured patients, are now being served by other safety-net hospitals in Philadelphia: mostly, Jefferson Health, the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Einstein Healthcare Network, and Temple University Hospital. All report increased volume in their emergency rooms, more ambulance arrivals, and more inpatient admissions, but at least so far, they also report that they are comfortably handling the increased patient volume created when Hahnemann closed its emergency room and discharged its last patients in July.
In the message, SNAP notes the important role Medicaid DSH payments play in helping private safety-net hospitals care for the many uninsured patients who continue to turn to them for care.