Proposed Legislation Addresses Funding, Operations for Emergency Departments

[CAL/AAEM News Service]

Proposed Legislation Addresses Funding, Operations for Emergency Departments

Source: California Healthline (http://www.californiahealthline.org) 
Date: May 13, 2005
 

Sens. Richard Alarcon (D-Van Nuys) and Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) with four
other lawmakers on Wednesday discussed legislation to increase federal funding
for emergency department physicians, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. The
bills are intended to stabilize funding for EDs, although legislators said that
the bills are temporary measures to prevent the system from "bleeding out"
until they find a permanent fiscal solution to ED funding problems.

According to the Daily News, the legislation would:

Standardize some payment and allocations methods;

Address regional planning and coordination efforts;

Exclude patients from billing disputes between physicians and health plans; and

Require hospitals that close their EDs to notify the public in advance.

Comments
Alarcon said, "Communities shouldn't be caught off guard with a hospital or
emergency [department] closure." He added, "State and local agencies and
community groups need ample time to find out if anything can be done to keep
emergency [department] and hospital doors open, to find alternative buyers and
intervene on behalf of those who will suffer."

Irv Edwards, president-elect of the California chapter of the American College
of Emergency Physicians said, "The [ED] health care system is crumbling." He
said that recent ED closures in the San Fernando Valley have contributed to
increased patient volumes at nearby hospitals, leading to "bad medicine."

Republican lawmakers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), and representatives of
the hospital and health insurance industries declined to comment on the bills,
the Daily News reports (Geissinger, Los Angeles Daily News, 5/12). 

For more information, please visit:
www.californiahealthline.org/index.cfm?Action=dspItem&itemID=111077 


Cyrus Shahpar & Brian Potts 
Managing Editors, CAL/AAEM News Service 
UC-Irvine


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