Suggestions flow as Missouri legislators weigh options for Medicaid, By Virginia Young, August 15, 2013, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Give patients with chronic diseases a health care team. Monitor a state database to spot abuse of prescription drugs. Reward pregnant teens who keep their doctor appointments. Those were among the many suggestions that flowed Wednesday to a Senate committee examining ways to improve the quality and efficiency of Medicaid, the joint state and federal health care program for the poor. The Senate hearing was one of two held Wednesday as Missouri legislators grapple with whether to expand Medicaid to cover an additional 260,000 people, as envisioned by the federal Affordable Care Act…”
Day: August 16, 2013
Medicaid Patients and Hospital Readmissions
NC study cut hospital readmissions among state’s sickest, poorest patients, By John Murawski, August 7, 2013, News and Observer: “A North Carolina study on reducing costly hospital visits cut readmissions by 20 percent among the sickest and poorest patients who are most prone to relying on hospitals for their medical care. The project, believed to be the largest of its kind in the nation, was conducted by Community Care of North Carolina, a Raleigh-based physician-led program that focuses on helping poor people get health care and avoid hospitalization. It involved some 800 nurses and social workers doing intensive follow-ups with Medicaid patients. They sometimes shadowed patients for months to make sure they took their medications, kept their doctor’s appointments and followed all instructions…”
New Orleans Economic Report
New Orleans shows striking potential, persistent problems, 8 years after Hurricane Katrina, economic report says, by Mark Waller, August 14, 2013, New Orleans Times-Picayune: “With the eighth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina impending, the New Orleans area is showing encouraging signs that it might be pulling off a rare reversal of a once-entrenched economic decline, but some weaknesses persist, concludes the latest check on the region’s economic health by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. The Data Center’s report, called the New Orleans Index at Eight and released Wednesday, compared the city to national averages, a group of growing cities that New Orleans might hope to emulate and a group of cities with moribund economic numbers from 1990 to 2000, more resembling New Orleans during the same period…”