Emergency room doctors and on-call specialists treating uninsured patients at private hospitals in Los Angeles County could see county payments slashed under a proposal before supervisors today.<\/p>\n
The rate cuts could force private hospitals to close emergency rooms, sending more patients to crowded county hospitals, officials said.<\/p>\n
L.A. County reimburses doctors 27% of the cost of providing care to the uninsured during their first three days of care at private hospitals. Under the proposal, that reimbursement rate would be reduced to 18% as of July 1. Supervisors last reduced the rate from 29% in January 2009.<\/p>\n
About 4,700 doctors would see payments cut under the proposal, according to Carol Meyer, chief network officer for the county\u2019s Department of Health Services. Under the new rate, doctors would receive 43% of what Medi-Cal pays for the same services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe health department has a $200-million deficit. The state\u2019s not going to give us anything to fix it. There is no one to backfill,\u201d Meyer said.<\/p>\n
The county had expected to pay doctors with $9 million from the state\u2019s Emergency Medical Services Appropriation. But state lawmakers eliminated the fund, and as the number of uninsured grows, private doctors are expected to file more claims than ever with the county this year, Meyer said \u2014 an estimated 350,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no new source of funding to fill that gap,\u201d Meyer said.<\/p>\n
Doctors will likely look to hospitals to make up the difference, officials said. If they can\u2019t, hospitals may lose doctors and be forced to close emergency rooms. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt depends just how much pressure is put on those hospitals,\u201d said Jim Lott, executive vice president of the Hospital Assn. of Southern California, \u201cSome hospitals could be pushed over the edge by this.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than half of Los Angeles County\u2019s 72 hospitals are operating at a deficit and two are in bankruptcy, Lott said. Countywide, 11 hospitals have closed since 2002, all of which had emergency rooms, he said.<\/p>\n
Meyer said county officials consulted with doctors and hospital officials before proposing the rate cuts. But doctors said they would have appreciated more time to propose alternatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed like it happened all of a sudden,\u201d said Dr. Robert Bitonte, president of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn. \u201cIt will impact indigent care, there\u2019s no doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n
— Molly Hennessy-Fiske<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emergency room doctors and on-call specialists treating uninsured patients at private hospitals in Los Angeles County could see county payments slashed under a proposal before supervisors today. The rate cuts could force private hospitals to close emergency rooms, sending more patients to crowded county hospitals, officials said. L.A. County reimburses doctors 27% of the cost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5532,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5532"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}