Uncategorized Archives - Page 24 of 29 - Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania

SNAP Asks PA Delegation to Protect Safety-Net Hospitals in Budget Talks

As the congressional budget conference committee begins its work, SNAP has asked members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation to urge their colleagues serving on the committee to protect the state’s safety-net hospitals from any further Medicare and Medicaid cuts.
In the message, SNAP notes the significant Medicare and Medicaid cuts the state’s safety-net hospitals have already suffered and warns that further cuts could jeopardize access to care in communities across the commonwealth.
Read SNAP’s message to the Pennsylvania congressional delegation here, on the SNAP web site.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-10-30T06:00:36+00:00October 30th, 2013|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania, Uncategorized|Comments Off

PA Renews CHIP

Pennsylvania has extended its Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through the end of 2015.
The law renewing the program, which provides health insurance to all children who needs it, also eliminates the six-month waiting period for eligibility for services.
The state also intends to increase its outreach efforts in an attempt to reverse a recent decline in program enrollment.
Currently, CHIP serves 188,000 children in the state.
Read more about the CHIP renewal and the program itself in this Philadelphia Inquirer article.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-10-21T06:00:42+00:00October 21st, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Medicaid Patients Get Comparable Face Time With Primary Care Docs

Primary care physicians do not spend less time with their Medicaid patients, a new study has concluded.
While Medicaid patients may face greater challenges finding primary care physicians who will serve them, once they find one, those doctors will spend no less time with them than they do with their commercially insured patients. Medicaid patients also receive more diagnostic and treatment services than their commercial counterparts as well as no less attention to preventive care.
Learn more about the findings of George Washington University researchers in the article “No Evidence That Primary Care Physicians Offer Less Care to Medicaid, Community Health Center, or Uninsured Patients” here, on the web site of the journal Health Affairs.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-09-19T06:00:53+00:00September 19th, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Tackling Medicaid “Super-Users”

All Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals have them: a relatively small number of Medicaid patients who are constantly in need of care.
Five percent of all Medicaid beneficiaries account for more than half of all Medicaid expenditures. The challenges such patients pose are legitimate: many have multiple chronic conditions.
How best to serve these patients? The Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services has been looking into this problem and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have been underwriting demonstration programs designed to find better ways to care for these patients.
Read more about the problem and these models, and find a direct link to a Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services advisory bulletin on the subject, here on the Fierce Healthcare web site.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-08-01T06:00:23+00:00August 1st, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Docs Dropping Medicare in Growing Numbers

More than 9500 doctors stopped accepting Medicare in 2012 – nearly three times as many who dropped out of the program just three years earlier.
In addition, the proportion of family doctors who accepted new Medicare patients that year fell from 83 percent in 2010 to 81 percent.
While most doctors who leave Medicare cite what they consider to be its inadequate payment rates, some do not want to adopt electronic health records and others feel that they can fare better financially without the additional staff needed to process Medicare claims.
While some Medicare patients choose to pay out of their own pocket rather than switch doctors, that is seldom an option for most of the low-income patients served by Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals.
Read more about the challenges Medicare faces in retaining enough doctors to serve the nation’s aging population and why more doctors are dropping out of the program in this Wall Street Journal article .

PA Safety Net Admin2013-07-31T06:00:37+00:00July 31st, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Low-Income Patients Prefer Hospital ERs

Even when they have health insurance, many low-income patients prefer receiving care in hospital emergency rooms rather than private physician offices or clinics.
According to a new study published in the journal Health Affairs, low-income patients cite convenience, cost, and quality as reasons for their preference.
These findings emerge at a time when government and insurers are working hard to find ways to reduce overuse of costly hospital emergency room services.
Emergency room overuse is especially a problem for many of Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals, which often have among the busiest emergency facilities in the regions they serve.
Read more about the new study in this report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and find the study itself here, on the Health Affairs web site.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-07-16T06:00:59+00:00July 16th, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Feds Take Over PA Fair Care

Pennsylvania has turned over to the federal government control of its health insurance program for people with pre-existing medical conditions.
PA Fair Care currently insures about 7000 Pennsylvanians whose pre-existing conditions make the cost of private health insurance prohibitive. Created under the Affordable Care Act, the program was intended to serve as a bridge to the availability of insurance through health insurance exchanges in 2014.
But when federal funding for the program fell short for the current fiscal year and the state was faced with the prospect of absorbing some of its costs, Pennsylvania exercised its option to turn PA Fair Care over to the federal government.
Read more about PA Fair Care and why the federal government will now run it in this Kaiser Health News article .

PA Safety Net Admin2013-07-05T06:00:42+00:00July 5th, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Meet the New Secretary

The Central Penn Business Journal has published an interview with new Department of Public Welfare Secretary Beverly Mackereth.
Among other issues, Secretary Mackereth addresses Pennsylvania’s high Medicaid costs, Medicaid expansion in the state, and her department’s preparations for implementation of various facets of the Affordable Care Act.
Read the complete interview here .

PA Safety Net Admin2013-06-28T06:00:49+00:00June 28th, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off

MedPAC: Readmissions Penalties Unfairly Target Safety-Net Hospitals

Medicare penalties for hospital readmissions are inappropriately hurting hospitals that serve especially large numbers of low-income patients.
That was the message MedPAC conveyed to Congress last week.
The agency, which advises Congress on Medicare reimbursement matters, expressed concern earlier this year about the effect of Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program on safety-net hospitals, and it articulated that concern more formally in its June report to Congress.
As reported by Kaiser Health News,

MedPAC found that hospitals where fewer than 3 percent of Medicare patients were low income received an average penalty of 0.21 percent. Hospitals where more than 18 percent of Medicare patients were low income had an average penalty more than twice that, 0.45 percent.

As an alternative to the current approach, MedPAC has proposed setting readmission rate targets for hospitals and then exempting from penalties hospitals that meet their targets.
Read more about MedPAC’s report to Congress in this Kaiser Health News article or read the entire MedPAC report, Report to the Congress: Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System, which can be found here, on MedPAC’s web site.

PA Safety Net Admin2013-06-19T06:00:51+00:00June 19th, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off

DPW Says Fiscal Office Understates Cost of Medicaid Expansion

The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare has released a letter it sent to the state’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) rejecting many of the assumptions underlying the latter’s analysis of the cost of expanding Medicaid eligibility in the state and stating that as a result of these incorrect assumptions, the IFO has significantly understated the cost of Medicaid expansion in Pennsylvania.
According to the letter sent by acting DPW secretary Beverly Mackereth to IFO director Matthew Knittel, the IFO inaccurately characterizes the baseline year during which to account for potential costs and savings; incorrectly maintains that upfront costs – including hiring 2000 new workers at higher salaries than the IFO projects – will be less than savings; and overstates savings associated with increased federal matching funds for General Assistance recipients.
DPW also maintains in the letter that the IFO incorrectly assumes that new enrollment will take place gradually instead of fairly quickly once expansion begins; underestimates the number of new “woodwork” enrollees – individuals already eligible for Medicaid who will enroll in the program because of all the attention the eligibility expansion will receive; and prematurely assumes continued income from the gross receipts tax on Medicaid managed care organizations before the federal government has had an opportunity to decide whether the state will be permitted to continue levying that tax.
Read about the letter in this Philadelphia Business Journal article or download the letter itself here.