safety-net hospitals Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania

Safety-Net Hospitals and Readmissions

Safety-net hospitals are 30 percent more likely to have readmission rates that exceed the national average – always a problem, but a greater problem than ever now that Medicare is penalizing hospitals for readmissions through its new Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program.
A recent Commonwealth Fund study quantified the degree to which safety-net hospitals’ readmissions exceed national averages, citing as the reason for those reasons that

Safety-net hospitals care for a disproportionate share of vulnerable populations who are low-income, uninsured, underinsured, or on Medicaid. They have substantially higher rates of chronic health problems, disability, mental illness, and substance abuse, compared with the general population. Safety-net hospital patients also have disproportionate personal and social needs that adversely affect their health and act as barriers to accessing and fully benefiting from care. These include homelessness, unsafe housing, and unstable employment. In particular, vulnerable populations are more likely to lack social support systems (e.g., family members at home) and housing stability, which contribute to a disproportionate risk of readmission after hospital discharge.

The report also offers strategies to help safety-net hospitals reduce their readmissions and avoid the Medicare financial penalties they now face for those readmissions.
Find “Higher Readmissions at Safety-Net Hospitals and Potential Policy Solutions” here , on the web site of The Commonwealth Fund.

PA Safety Net Admin2012-12-13T06:00:01+00:00December 13th, 2012|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Cost of Medicaid Expansion Would be Minimal for PA

Expanding Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act would cost Pennsylvania $1.96 billion over the ten years beginning in FY 2013, according to a new report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
While that price tag may seem steep, it is only 1.4 percent more than the additional money the state would spend if it declines to expand its Medicaid program as the 2010 health care reform law envisioned.
Expanding Medicaid would spur a 52 percent increase in the number of Pennsylvanians with health insurance. Without the Medicaid expansion, the number of insured would rise 28.9 percent because of other Affordable Care Act provisions.
Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals would benefit greatly from the expansion of Medicaid in the state. Many of the uninsured patients they currently serve would almost certainly become eligible for Medicaid under such an expansion.
Learn more about how Medicaid expansion would affect Pennsylvania in this Central Penn Business Journal article. The Kaiser Family Foundation study on which it is based can be found here .

PA Safety Net Admin2012-11-29T11:41:24+00:00November 29th, 2012|Health care reform, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

Medicare DSH Cuts Loom for PA Safety-Net Hospitals

Safety-net hospitals across the country will soon lose important funding that helps them care for many of their low-income and uninsured patients: their Medicare disproportionate share hospital payments (Medicare DSH).
Come 2014, the Affordable Care Act mandates a significant cut in hospitals’ Medicare DSH payments. The underlying rationale for this cut is that once the health care reform law’s individual insurance mandate takes effect and states begin greatly expanding Medicaid eligibility (a reform law mandate made optional by this year’s Supreme Court decision), hospitals will have fewer such patients and less need for supplemental DSH funding.
But as a Kaiser Health News article points out, hospital officials are concerned that the funding will phase out before the expanded insurance phases in, leaving them with fewer resources to care for their low-income, still-uninsured patients.
Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals, which care for large numbers of low-income and uninsured patients, figure to suffer considerably under such circumstances.
Learn more about the phase-down of Medicare DSH payments and the challenges hospitals will face in its wake in this Kaiser Health News article .

PA Safety Net Admin2012-10-17T06:00:13+00:00October 17th, 2012|Health care reform|Comments Off

New Medicare Wrinkle May Hurt Safety-Net Hospitals

A new Medicare program that bases payments to hospitals in part on patient satisfaction with those hospitals could be especially harmful to the nation’s safety-net hospitals.
The Medicare value-based purchasing program, which took effect on October 1, will withhold one percent of all hospitals’ Medicare payments and then redistribute that money based on hospitals’ compliance with selected standards-of-care requirements and on the results of surveys of hospitalized Medicare patients. The withheld one percent will then be redistributed to hospitals that perform well based on these criteria. Beginning in 2017, two percent of hospitals’ Medicare payments will be withheld and eventually redistributed in this manner.
Learn more about the Medicare value-based purchasing program and how hospitals are preparing for the survey component of its payment adjustments in this Wall Street Journal article .

PA Safety Net Admin2012-10-16T06:00:55+00:00October 16th, 2012|Health care reform|Comments Off

Sequestration Could Cost Health Care Jobs in PA

Unless Congress reverses the sequestration of $2 billion in Medicare funding by the end of 2012, that cut in federal Medicare spending could result in the loss of nearly a half-million health care jobs across the country in 2013 alone.
And more than 37,000 of those lost health care jobs could be in Pennsylvania.
So says a new report sponsored by the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Nurses Association.
The cuts are mandated by the Budget Control Act, which Congress adopted late last year. While discussions are under way in Congress to block or delay implementation of the sequestration cuts in Medicare, defense, and other spending areas, it is not clear at this time whether those efforts will succeed.
It also is not clear what cuts the federal government will make to save the required $2 billion.
Any large-scale job losses associated with reduced federal Medicare spending would no doubt hit Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals hard because of the large numbers of Medicare patients they serve and their already-thin operating margins.
Download the report describing the impact of the $2 billion Medicare sequestration on health care employment here and read more about the prospects for health care jobs in Pennsylvania in this Pittsburgh Business Times report.

PA Safety Net Admin2012-09-14T06:00:31+00:00September 14th, 2012|Uncategorized|Comments Off

NY Times Looks at Safety-Net Hospitals

The New York Times’ “Doctor and Patient” blog has taken a brief look at safety-net hospitals.
In the article “The Fraying Hospital Safety Net,” Dr. Pauline Chen examines the challenges safety-net hospitals face and the ability of many of them, even in the face of those challenges, to deliver quality care.
Read this New York Times article on safety-net hospitals here.

PA Safety Net Admin2012-09-13T06:00:03+00:00September 13th, 2012|Uncategorized|Comments Off

“Medicaid Works,” Foundation Declares

Medicaid improves access to care and saves lives and deserves to be expanded in the manner envisioned in the Affordable Care Act, according to a new blog entry on the web site of the health care-focused Commonwealth Fund.
According to the blog commentary, Medicaid “fulfills the two main purposes of health insurance – ensuring access to needed care and providing adequate financial protection from burdensome medical expenses.” It also cites research that “confirms that expanding Medicaid not only improves access to care and financial protection of vulnerable individuals and families, but actually saves lives.”
In addition, the blog suggests that Medicaid recipients have only slightly greater cost-related access-to-care problems than individuals with private insurance.
The Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania (SNAP) and the state’s private safety-net hospitals have eagerly anticipated the expansion of Medicaid eligibility mandated by the Affordable Care Act. In the wake of the Supreme Court decision ruling the expansion mandate unconstitutional, these safety-net hospitals now await for Governor Corbett’s decision on whether Pennsylvania will move ahead with that Medicaid expansion.
The title of this commentary is “Medicaid Works: Public Program Continues to Provide Access to Care and Financial Protection for Society’s Most Vulnerable,” and it can be found here , on the Commonwealth Fund’s web site.

PA Safety Net Admin2012-08-29T06:00:13+00:00August 29th, 2012|Health care reform, Pennsylvania Medicaid laws and regulations, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania, Uncategorized|Comments Off

Safety-Net Hospitals Could Lose Ground Under New Medicare Payment Plan

The value-based purchasing program that Medicare plans to unroll in October could result in reduced payments to the nation’s safety-net hospitals.
A report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that safety-net hospitals receive lower scores in measures that Medicare will use as part of its new value-based purchasing program. Those scores are based on data from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey.
As a result of those lower scores, the article “Patient Experience in Safety-Net Hospitals: Implications for Improving Care and Value-Based Purchasing” concluded that safety-net hospitals could receive lower Medicare payments that could affect their financial health.
Read a Kaiser Health News on the new study here and the Archives of Internal Medicine report itself here Hospital building .

PA Safety Net Admin2012-07-18T10:32:35+00:00July 18th, 2012|Uncategorized|Comments Off

SNAP’s Perspective on PA’s Budget

The state budget passed in Harrisburg last week represents both a victory for Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals and an affirmation of the manner in which the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania (SNAP) has pursued its advocacy on behalf of the state’s safety-net hospitals.
Under this budget, and despite still-difficult economic times, safety-net hospitals came away almost entirely unharmed by state spending cuts.
The genesis of this success can be traced back to February, when Governor Corbett unveiled his proposed budget. After years of SNAP’s vigorous advocacy that emphasized urging state officials to direct the state’s scarce resources to their primary partners in caring for Medical Assistance patients – Pennsylvania’s private safety-net hospitals – this year’s budget proposal did exactly that. Instead of the usual proposals to cut Medicaid disproportionate share (Medicaid DSH) and other supplemental payments that only safety-net hospitals receive, the administration proposed spreading the potential financial pain to all hospitals, as exemplified by its original proposal to cut fee-for-service hospital base rate payments four percent while leaving the most critical supplemental payments untouched.
This proposal gave every hospital in the state, not just safety-net hospitals, a stake in opposing the proposed cuts. This brought the entire hospital industry together to oppose those cuts. This unified effort proved successful – vindication, we believe, of SNAP’s long-time approach to advocating the distinct interests of Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals.

PA Safety Net Admin2012-07-05T13:16:19+00:00July 5th, 2012|Medicaid supplemental payments, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Pennsylvania state budget issues, Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania|Comments Off

Supreme Court Decision Has Huge Medicaid Implications

When the Supreme Court rules on the challenge to the Affordable Care Act, its decision will have enormous implications for states, low-income and uninsured people, and health care providers.
Among the many features of the health care reform act on which the Supreme Court will rule is the single biggest expansion of eligibility since Medicaid was introduced in the mid-1960s.
As they await the court’s decision, many states already are laying the groundwork for the addition of between 15 million and 20 million people to the nation’s Medicaid rolls.
Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals have a considerable stake in the court’s decision because the planned Medicaid expansion could add as many as a half-million people to the state’s Medical Assistance rolls.
The New York Times has taken a closer look at the stakes in the court’s upcoming decision. Read that Times article here .

PA Safety Net Admin2012-06-18T10:11:29+00:00June 18th, 2012|Health care reform, Uncategorized|Comments Off

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