|
||
Monday,
May 21, 2007 The Ohio Advocates for Health Care Access will host a meeting May 31 in Columbus on pandemic planning, Disaster and Pandemic Preparedness: Is Your Organization Ready?. James J, James, M.D., director of the American Medical Association Center for Public Health Preparedness and Disaster Response will present the keynote address and a panel of legislators and experts from the private section, including OHA’s Director of Emergency Management Carol Jacobson, will discuss what Ohio is doing to be prepared for disasters and pandemics. The meeting is free of charge and will be held from 10 to noon at South B&C, 31st Floor, Riffe Center, 77 South High Street. Space is limited, so please RSVP to Carol Zimmerman at czimmerman@lesiccamper.com or Stephanie Pavol at 614.220.8659. Find more information at www.oahca.org.
Hospitals’
Heartbeat
Pamela
Harhager, SW
A look
inside Pamela’s nomination –
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 Calling on the legislature to help Ohio avoid a collapsed trauma system as happened in Los Angeles, Mary C. McMarthy, M.D., FACS, director of trauma services for Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton and Professor of Surgery for Wright State University School of Medicine, noted the vital need for expensive but critical trauma care in Ohio’s hospitals. F. Barry Knotts, M.D., Ph.D., medical director, trauma care with St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo, echoed McCarthy saying “no money, no mission” in reference to the hospital’s mission and ability to provide care to the underserved. Saying that additional state funds would bolster the number two and three biggest employers in the region – University Hospitals Geneva Medical Center and Conneaut Medical Center – Laura Delago, president, noted the high percentage of Medicaid patients combined with increasing charity care are a financial threat to the two critical access hospitals without adequate reimbursement. Speaking on the need for access to obstetrics care in rural hospitals, William D. Watkins, chief administrative officer of Bluffton Hospital, said the hospital lost on average $2,000 per Medicaid OB patient because Medicaid pays the hospital below its cost to provide that vital care. Medicaid payments to the hospital in 2006 fell short of costs by $800,000, Watkins said. OHA is working to put statehouse media representatives in touch with hospitals in their area to provide local examples of the need behind OHA’s state budget requests. Additional resources about OHA’s budget requests are available online at www.ohanet.org/advocacy/state/issues/statebudget.htm. (Bridget Gargan, bridgetg@ohanet.org; Tiffany Himmelreich, tiffanyh@ohanet.org) Wednesday,
May 23, 2007 Having your child rushed to a hospital emergency room by ambulance after a serious accident is terrifying – but imagine the added fear when the paramedics are directed to another hospital because the ER closest to home is full. For instance, in the Dayton area, this happened 1,035 times in hospital emergency departments (EDs) in 2006. But it occurs in hospitals throughout the state as EDs continue to serve as vital points of care for Ohioans. In 2005, nearly half of the 1.5 million patients admitted to an Ohio hospital started in the ED. Add those patients who are treated and then released, and Ohioans made more than 5.2 million trips to their local ED, with the patients most often seen by ED staff being infants and one-year-old children. Medicaid covers 47 percent of the kids who visit EDs for treatment and don’t need to be admitted to the hospital and 45 percent of those kids whose conditions do require overnight stays. In 2005, hospitals lost $321 million in shortfalls from the Medicaid program, and emergency room care is a primary area where hospitals suffer financially because the services they provide are often costly and reimbursement remains low. The legislature is wrapping up discussions on the state budget, which currently includes an inpatient update for hospitals that would defray a portion of these losses. Other legislation currently under debate in the Ohio Senate would require all hospitals to operate 24/7 emergency departments. Ohioans depend on hospitals for certain services such as emergency departments, and Senate Bill 120 would require that these services be available. Hospital emergency rooms prove invaluable each time a hurting patient walks through the doors – and those doors open more than five million times a year. All Ohio hospitals are dedicated to providing access to high quality care to their patients, and adequate funding and shared responsibility for emergency patients help ensure access to this care 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For more information, view OHA’s May HealthBeat.
Thursday,
May 24, 2007 The Ohio Court of Appeals found this month that a trial court did not err in imposing sanctions on an attorney who insisted on pursuing a medical malpractice claim that clearly had no merit. The attorney’s client and her husband sued Southwest General Health Center, Dr. Walter Masnyj, Dr. Mohammed Khan and others, alleging she visited the emergency room for a fracture and was told she could not stay overnight at the hospital since she did not have insurance. John E. Duda appeared as counsel, asking the court for an extension of time to file an expert report but the report was never filed. The report and the complaint was eventually dismissed without prejudice. Duda then refiled the complaint without an expert report and the court dismissed the complaint. Defendants filed a motion for sanctions, which the trial court granted, finding Duda “engaged in sanctionable conduct for 1) bringing a loss of consortium claim, 2) including all of the defendants in the allegations that his client was called a drug addict and told to leave the hospital because she did not have insurance 3) failing to dismiss the case after learning it totally lacked merit and his clients did not want to proceed, and 4) alleging punitive damages in the refiled complaint without any basis. The appeals court upheld the trial court’s sanctions in Sigmon v. Southwest Gen. Health Ctr. (Rick Sites, ricks@ohanet.org)
Hospitals’
Heartbeat
Maintenance Supervisor Barnesville Hospital Association Barnesville
A look
inside Wesley’s nomination –
Friday, May 25, 2007 After weeks of debate, the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration have agreed on a bill that includes funding for both the U.S. Department of Defense and key domestic programs, including Medicaid. H.R. 2206, the “U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act of 2007,” passed both the U.S. House and Senate yesterday, and President Bush has indicated he will sign the bill. Included in the measure is a hospital-backed provision that will temporarily prohibit the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services (CMS) from adopting two recently-proposed Medicaid rules. CMS had announced intentions to eliminate Medicaid Graduate Medical Education reimbursement for teaching hospitals, and to limit reimbursement to public hospitals under Medicaid. But with enactment of H.R. 2206, CMS would not be permitted to implement these or similar rules for one year. The bill also allows for redistribution of unspent State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) funds to states that have exhausted their current allotments.
These provisions mark a victory for hospital and patient advocates, who urged their federal lawmakers to support Medicaid in the supplemental appropriations bill. (Jonathan Archey, jonathana@ohanet.org) © 2001-2008 OHA. Last updated
January 03, 2008. |
