california healthcare foundation news from FierceHealthcare

Health exchanges--common marketplaces allowing buyers to choose between competing health plans--are a key feature of most health reform proposals. So why not look at the experience of California,... Read more...

A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine has drawn a disturbing conclusion--that physicians frequently don't tell patients when they have an abnormal test result. The researchers,... Read more...

Now here's a scary statistic: As many as half of California hospital facilities are at risk for earthquake damage--or even collapse--and won't meet state construction requirements, due largely to... Read more...

The California HealthCare Foundation has contributed $10 million to a low-interest loan pool that helps clinics for the poor and uninsured provide care during the state's budget impasse. This follows... Read more...

Although legions of doctors have bristled at the physician rankings that are widely available online, most consumers in fact do not use the rankings when choosing a provider, medical facility or even... Read more...

Though physicians fear that their business will be adversely affected by off-the-cuff online ratings, few patients actually make use of such ratings, according to new research. A Harris Interactive... Read more...

> After several months of wrangling over a counter-offer from Express Scripts, CVS shareholders have agreed to merge with Caremark Rx. Article

> A new report by the California HealthCare Foundation suggests that racial, cultural and ethnic factors often dictate what kind of end-of-life care California patients receive. …

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A California hospital group has launched a website offering a quality report card on more than 200 hospitals across the state. The site, which is published by the California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Task Force (CHART) and the California HealthCare Foundation, rates hospitals on 50 performance indicators. These include not only risk-adjusted clinical measures of performance on such conditions as heart disease, maternity and …

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Nearly half of approximately 900 hospital buildings being retrofitted to meet new California seismic safety guidelines will miss the state's January 2008 compliance deadline (extended to 2013 for many older structures), and many may not even meet a second deadline in 2030, according to a California HealthCare Foundation/Rand Corporation report. Given that compliance will require construction of 40 million to 70 million square feet of space, it could be more than 30 years before the law is …

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Retail clinics have been a hot topic for quite some time here at FierceHealthcare. Along the way, we've covered some stumbles among …

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