In some states, reimbursements are so low that doctors say they lose money when they see Medicaid patients. And that can make it harder for patients to see their doctor — a recent study found that higher rates improve access to care.
Health Insurance and Costs
If you write about children’s health or health policy more generally, there’s one topic you won't be able to escape this year: the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The program’s funding will expire in September 2015 unless Congress renews it. Advocates say the program fills a vital need.
Medicare made a huge step forward this week in announcing that it would no longer pay for health care without taking into account whether the care was any good. The move could dramatically accelerate changes to how we pay for health care in this country.
Learning how to locate and use patient discharge data will make your reporting stronger and provide you with objective evidence for evaluating hospitals' claims. Such data can also lead to new story threads. Here's a quick-start guide.
A recent Sac Bee investigation revealed disturbingly high staff turnover rates at a number of California nursing homes. You can discover similar trends by learning how to navigate the data in California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and similar agencies nationwide.
Sign-ups for insurance on the federal and state health exchanges end in less than a month, and the state's push to enroll more Latinos appears to be paying off. Meanwhile, safety net providers such as Clinica Sierra Vista are focused on both signing up and retaining patients.
"Narrowing of networks" was an abstract concept to me until Blue Shield narrowed my own network of healthcare providers, most of whom I have been seeing for 18 years.
As a federal "funding bump" expires, the payments California doctors receive for seeing Medicaid patients are dramatically decreasing. At the same time, the state is imposing a 10 percent fee cut that was approved in 2011 but is just now taking effect.
In New Jersey, an estimated 11,000 Medicaid applicants are still trapped in a tangle of digital red tape and a bureaucratic maze. Some families have been in limbo for nearly a year. The state has yet to announce any permanent solution.
A strongly reported series examining a new program targeting 'super-utilizers' in Pennsylvania debunks a number of myths about the system's sickest and most vulnerable patients. Timothy Darragh tells the story behind the story and the lessons he learned along the way.