Practice Management
More than half of visits to emergency rooms in California’s San Diego County hospitals between 2004 and 2014 were for complaints that were nonemergent, according to the county Health and Human Services Agency there. Overall volume swelled by 40% over that time, despite population growth of just 7% in the nation’s eighth largest city. The problem has gotten so bad that civic leaders staged a media blitz, imploring residents through newspapers and television news to …
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Six years after its inception, government forecasts concerning the cost of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) continue to climb. Now the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the bill over the next decade will be approximately 11% higher than predicted just a year ago—that’s an extra $136 billion, for a total of $1.34 trillion over that time. The CBO chalks the greater cost up to higher-than-expected enrollment in the expanded Medicaid program established by …
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Runaway healthcare spending that amounts to 17.5% of the U.S. economy is inspiring some entrepreneurial insurers to launch new models aimed at bridging the gap between patients and health systems—instead of creating friction between those two interdependent parties, which some claim traditional insurers are doing. One, ZOOM+, is headed by a physician and owns its own neighborhood medical clinics. Another, Clover Health, raised $135 million in venture capital to build a company that sells only …
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One of the selling points of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare) was that it would save health dollars by diverting newly insured patients away from the emergency room toward primary care physicians. Instead, ED use has continued to grow. The issue, according to Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard’s School of Public Health, is the same as it’s always been, regardless of an individual’s insurance status: …
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After months of legislative back-and-forth, and as we previewed here last month, the US House of Representatives has passed new legislation that essentially repeals the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”). The Senate already voted to approve the bill, called the Restoring America’s Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, after implementing changes to the original version. Proponents of the new bill—which President Obama has already promised to veto—say it would cut the federal deficit by $516 billion …
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Some urgent care operators may be starting the new year with old worries about what the Affordable Care Act, known alternately as ACA or Obamacare, means for their centers. More specifically, there is concern that the shift away from PPO, in which patients can choose any provider in their network, to more rigid HMOs—many of which require patients to have preauthorization/referral to use urgent care or pay increased steerage—could hurt the industry. Where optimists hoped …
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Come January 1, the latest provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to go into effect will require companies that employ 50–99 people to offer acceptable health coverage to at least 95% of their full-time workers. Since that would include many urgent care centers, it’s likely that some operators will see their healthcare spending go up. However, savvy marketers will seize on the opportunity to demonstrate the value of their occupational medicine services to local …
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The United States Senate is the latest—and certainly the most prestigious—body to recommend pulling the plug on the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare). The Senate followed the lead of the House of Representatives by passing a new bill on December 3 that essentially repeals ACA. Passage of the new bill may be a moot point, as President Obama is likely to veto it. Once heralded by proponents as the salvation of uninsured …
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