California news from FierceHealthcare
News
California uses web-based tool to track suspicious drug use
The state of California has rolled out a new web-based tool that tracks the use of controlled substances, including addictive painkillers such as Oxycontin and Valium. The idea is to help nurses,... Read more...
CA woman gets eight years in prison for recruiting patients for needless surgery
A California woman has been sentenced to eight years in prison for a massive health insurance fraud scheme which recruited people for unnecessary surgeries. Lilia Toscano has pleaded guilty to 98... Read more...
California considers regs to reduce policy rescissions
Regulators in California have proposed new regulations intended to defeat the health plan industry's practice of canceling policies retroactively over inadvertent application errors. If enacted,... Read more...
CA may require health plans, MDs to cut appointment wait times
After six years of discussion, California is on the brink of becoming the first state in the country to set rules as to how many hours a health plan member must wait before seeing their doctor. Under... Read more...
CA in-home care program littered with fraud
The California healthcare program, In Home Supportive Services is one of the fastest growing in the state's government, budgeted at $5.42 billion this year alone, and set to care for roughly 440,000... Read more...
Cobra coverage may last longer for newly laid off workers in CA
A new bill introduced in California may add as much as nine months to Cobra insurance coverage for workers laid off from smaller companies with up to 20 employees. The federal stimulus would fuel a... Read more...
CA passes law requiring health plans to provide interpreters
California has passed a new law, believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S., that requires health insurers to provide an interpreter for patients with poor English skills. The law, which took... Read more...
CA approves more funding for children's hospitals
Voters in California approved a bond measure that will allot $930 million to the "construction, expansion and remodeling" of children's hospitals, reports Modern Healthcare. Known as Proposition 3,... Read more...
CA ambulatory surgery centers remain in legal limbo
In California, as elsewhere in the U.S., ambulatory surgical centers have been wildly successful, and their numbers have been expanding rapidly. As of 2005, there were about 4,500 in operation,... Read more...
CT may file bill requiring health plans to issue individual policies
Even when you're not dealing with the thorny issue of policy rescissions--which has been so colorfully the case in California--individual health insurance policies are a tricky bet at best. Insurers... Read more...
