Physician Shortage Impacts Texas
from The Longview News-Journal, Dec. 22, 2008
Longview's Dr. Lewis Browne would welcome a bit more competition in his field. And he said medical specialists and other primary care physicians would be happy to see more of his kind of doctor, as well. Like much of the nation, Browne and other medical professionals say there's a shortage of primary care physicians in and around Longview. Dr. Josie Williams, president of the Texas Medical Association, said the state definitely needs more primary care physicians and the problem is nationwide. "Primary care physicians do the hard work," Williams said. "They listen to the patients and figure out how to best meet their medical needs. Without a sufficient number of primary care physicians, patients end up with uncoordinated care from a variety of specialists and nobody is looking at their overall health situation." More

Medicaid Coverage Extended for 34,000 Texas Children
from The Dallas Morning News, Dec. 23, 2008
Texas has extended Medicaid coverage for about 34,000 children in the Houston-Beaumont area for 90 days, as officials sort out whether Hurricane Ike disrupted poor families’ efforts to re-enroll their youngsters. Albert Hawkins, head of the Health and Human Services Commission, granted the grace period Monday to prevent a big dip in children’s Medicaid enrollment at the end of the month. “Given the widespread damage and disruption in services caused by Ike, we believe it’s wise to err on the side of caution and give these families more time to renew their children’s coverage,” he said. More

Insurance to Let Texas Seniors Use Medicaid Without Going Broke
from The Dallas Morning News, Dec. 22, 2008
Beginning early next year, Texans who plan for their old age will get a special break from the state. People who buy long-term care insurance will be allowed to keep more of their savings if they ever need to turn to Medicaid to pay for nursing home care or in-home aides. State officials hope the new break will encourage more people to purchase private long-term care insurance and save the state's Medicaid program some money. More

Medicare Change Brings Worries
from The San Angelo Standard-Times, Dec. 21, 2008
As of Jan. 1, anyone who's had oxygen 36 months or longer will hit a cap in Medicare reimbursements to providers, said Mitch Ellis, a Standard-Times columnist and former vice president of the West Texas Healthcare Alliance. For the most part, oxygen providers will no longer receive Medicare payments for patients on oxygen for 36 months, but the providers are still required to serve them and give them free supplies, Ellis said. This comes after Congress passed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 that imposed budget cuts in various programs like Medicare. Medicare since then has readjusted cuts in its release of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act in October this year. More

New Federal Ratings: Half of Texas’ Nursing Homes Fail
from The Houston Chronicle, Dec. 18, 2008
Roughly half of Texas nursing homes earned below-average scores under a new federal five-star system that rates the quality of more than 15,000 facilities nationwide. The ratings, unveiled online Thursday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, were based on state health inspection reports, three years of complaint investigations, staff performance and resident care. But Houston-area nursing home administrators who earned the best and worst scores were cautious about the ratings. Texas long-term care groups were critical, calling the scores well-intended but misleading. More

Doctors Plead for Ten Percent Medicare Bonus in Stimulus Package
from The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 18, 2008
These days, the name of the game for getting government money is arguing that your well-being is vital to the nation’s economic recovery. Enter primary care doctors, hat in hand. American College of Physicians President Jeffrey Harris sent a letter yesterday to HHS nominee Tom Daschle asking that the Obama administration’s economic-stimulus package include a 10 percent pay bonus for all services provided by primary care docs under Medicare for a period of 18 months. The letter also requests that primary care practices, especially small ones, get a piece of the funding pie for health information technology. Obama has pledged to spend billions of dollars on that endeavor. More

The Worst Places to be Sick and Poor
from Forbes, Dec. 22, 2008
Public Citizen, a watchdog group, collated data from the Kaiser Family Foundation in April 2007 to create the only ranking of how Medicare programs rank state by state, the basis for this ranking of the worst places to be sick and poor--that is, the places where it would be worst to get stuck on Medicaid. Mississippi ranked last, mainly because it excludes medically needy patients, and Idaho came in second-to-last for pretty much the same reason--dinged for lacking a Medicaid fraud unit and for poor nursing home care. Texas did badly across the board. More

CMS Proposes No-Pay Rule on Three Surgical Errors
from American Medical News, Dec. 22, 2008
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Dec. 2 proposed three national coverage determinations that would end Medicare pay for surgeries involving any of three major errors. Physician and hospital organizations generally agree that these errors -- surgery on the wrong patient, surgery on the wrong body part, or the wrong surgery -- should never happen. But they say CMS' definitions of these events leave too much room for interpretation about the scope of the rules. More

President-Elect Obama Seeks To Create, Save Three Million Jobs in Health Care, Other Industries
from Kaiser Network, Dec. 22, 2008
As part of his proposed two-year economic stimulus package of between $675 billion and $775 billion, President-elect Barack Obama seeks to create or save three million jobs, his transition team announced on Saturday, The Los Angeles Times reports. According to The New York Times, the "sorts of jobs Mr. Obama would propose to create involve ... installation of information technology in medical facilities," among others. Obama also "might also propose subsidies to train more nurses, both to create jobs now and address a looming shortage in the health professions," the New York Times reports. More