California Watch
News stories in this section spotlight activities in California, including actions by the state Assembly and state Senate; proposed legislation; regulators like the Department of Managed Health Care and Department of Insurance; and the state ACA exchange, Covered California.
UCSF Health has confirmed that its $100 million deal to acquire two struggling San Francisco community hospitals is just weeks away from closing. The city’s preeminent medical research institution has signed an agreement to purchase St. Mary’s Medical Center at 450 Stanyan St. — San Francisco’s oldest Catholic hospital — and Saint Francis Memorial Hospital at 900 ...
States are plowing billions of dollars into a high-stakes health care experiment that’s exploding around the country: using scarce public health insurance money to provide housing for the poorest and sickest Americans. California is going the biggest, pumping $12 billion into an ambitious Medicaid initiative largely to help homeless patients find housing, pay for it, ...
Sharp HealthCare, a seven-hospital system in San Diego, partnered with a specialty pharmacy solutions provider Jan. 30. Patients at the health system will soon receive personalized specialty care, including side effect and adherence management, regular follow-ups, access to financial assistance, and free medication delivery. Sharp’s deal with Shields Health Solutions will first focus on four disease states: ...
Health care affordability is worsening in California, with health care costs rising significantly faster than household income, and more than half of the state’s residents saying they or a family member skipped or delayed care in the past year because of cost.
The expected winter wave of respiratory viruses in California is steadily receding, with hospital admissions for COVID-19 and influenza falling back to levels seen before Christmas, according to figures reported by the state Friday. Health facilities and the public have fared much better this winter compared with the previous three seasons of the pandemic. Yet amid ...
Two large insurers based in Oakland, Calif., are implementing tougher security measures in response to rising crime in the city’s downtown, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Jan. 26. Kaiser Permanente is recommending employees in downtown Oakland stay in their office buildings during lunch, according to a memo obtained by Fox affiliate KTVU. The memo was prompted by street robberies ...
California health care workers banking on a state-ordered minimum wage increase later this year might have to wait a little longer. Because of the state’s $38 billion projected budget deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday said he is seeking changes to a law he signed just three months ago that set the health care industry on a path ...
Instead of relying on a test of your infectiousness from Covid-19 and symptoms to determine the need to isolate, California now is ignoring the test results. California’s Department of Health recently made major changes to its isolation requirements, one based on symptoms alone. On January 9, Tomás J. Aragón, M.D., Dr.P.H., director of the CDPH, ...
The bill’s introduction comes days before Gov. Gavin Newsom would present his plan for closing the state’s $68 billion budget deficit. Newsom has repeatedly cited his commitment to protecting the expansion, which is estimated to cost $4 billion per year.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is revisiting California’s phase-in of a nation-leading $25 minimum wage for health workers in the face of a projected $38 billion deficit, less than three months after he approved the measure. But renegotiating wages could threaten a delicate compromise between unions and the health industry. Newsom, whose administration initially opposed the wage deal as too costly, ...