Practice Management
Vermont is aiming to lower incidence of opioid addiction by putting new restrictions on prescribers. For starters, the state health department has recommended limiting the number of opioid pills a doctor can prescribe; Gov. Peter Shumlin suggested 10 would be appropriate for patients undergoing minor procedures like those that might be performed in the urgent care setting, but the proposal currently on the table frames the amount as a “5-day supply for acute pain.” That …
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Medicaid patients in Missouri will have to fork over an $8 copay before receiving care in the emergency room, thanks to a new bill that aims to reduce overusage in the ED. The bill allows for free visits to urgent care centers, however. Senate Bill 608 also gives physician offices the right to assess Medicaid patients a $5 penalty if they make a habit of missing appointments without 24-hours’ notice; miss an appointment once and …
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Payers, politicians, and practitioners don’t often line up on the same side of issues, but in Colorado they’re united in their distaste for a proposed single-payer system that would increase health coverage in the state—at the cost of a $25 billion tax increase that could drive employers out, some fear. Proponents counter that “ColoradoCare” would end up saving more than $6 billion annually by 2019. Under the program, residents would choose among private health insurance …
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California residents who have to visit out-of-network medical providers will get much-needed economic protection under a new bill just passed by state legislators. The bipartisan bill, AB72, assures that patients who received care in in-network facilities would have to pay only in-network cost sharing, regardless of whether the provider who treated the patient is in-network or out-of-network. This would not apply to self-insured employer health plans, however, which are shielded from state regulations by the …
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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act—better (if not more affectionately) known as HIPAA—was signed into effect in 1996, around the time that the World Wide Web was viewed as the wild frontier. In 2016, the internet is now The Establishment, every citizen of the United States has access to health insurance, and electronic data drive everything from who’s “trending” on Instagram to local, regional, and national expectations of the coming flu season. Even firewalls …
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Project ECHO—Extension for Community Health Outcomes—has helped physicians in rural New Mexico connect with specialists their patients would otherwise never be able to see since 2003. Now a pair of out-of-state senators want to see the program become the model for a national system telehealth system. The ECHO Act, cosponsored by Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Orrin Hatch of Utah, would require the Department of Health and Human Services to work with the Health …
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Alaska is the latest of many states marching toward adoption of new telehealth bills, but legislators there has been typically “maverick” in their approach to adopting such new technologies. The interesting thing about that state’s soon-to-be signed law is that physicians won’t have to be in-state in order to prescribe for Alaskans. In addition to removing in-state presence requirements for prescribing via telemedicine, SB 74 will pave the way for patients to connect with occupational …
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Louisiana lawmakers have passed a bill that would allow ambulances to deliver patients with non–life-threatening illnesses directly to urgent care centers in East Baton Rouge Parish. Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center has volunteered to accept low-acuity ambulance patients at its 24/7 urgent care facility as part of the pilot program. The legislation is expected to help address poor access to emergency care in the area since one hospital closed and another shut …
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Urgent care operators who face competition from freestanding emergency rooms should emphasize cost differences compared with urgent care, and remind patients that vigilance may be needed to tell the difference between the two. Patients in Texas, for example, are finding that a new law requiring freestanding emergency rooms to post notices that fees may be comparable to a hospital emergency room doesn’t go far enough in preventing surprisingly big bills postcare. One problem: The nature …
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Physician assistants in Ohio now have more authority to make decisions—including more freedom to prescribe drugs—under a new law signed into effect by Gov. John Kasich. While PAs still must work under the supervision of a physician, they have more autonomy when it comes to ordering diagnostics, prescribing or directly providing medications, and administering local anesthesia. While urgent care centers typically have physicians on site most or all of the time, retail clinics like those …
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