Health care reform presents a number of challenges to safety-net hospitals.  Recently, the Alliance for Health Reform and the Commonwealth Fund hosted a forum, “The Health of Safety-Net Hospitals:  How are They Faring?  What’s the Outlook?” to discuss these challenges.
Among the issues addressed in the forum were the financial challenges safety-net hospitals face in the coming years as a result of health care reform and implementation of the Affordable Care Act; the response of safety-net hospitals to these challenges; the special challenges safety-net hospitals face as a result of social, economic, and environmental conditions in the communities they serve; and proposed changes in some of the payments safety-net hospitals have long counted upon to help underwrite the care they provide to their uninsured, underinsured, and publicly insured patients.
These are the very issues that confront the the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania (SNAP) and private safety-net hospitals everywhere.
Visit the Alliance for Health Reform’s web site to learn more about the forum.  Available there are the participants’ PowerPoint presentations; videos and podcasts of the proceedings; and links to various source materials.  This can be found here.