the lund report

Regence and Ambulatory Surgery Centers Reach Compromise

Regence BlueCross BlueShield and other insurance companies that don’t want to pay surgery centers directly will have to send policyholders a check that they cannot cash without the surgery centers’ signature. The centers have been forced to send patients to collection agencies after the payments for their surgeries have gone missing.
June 17, 2013 — A measure that would cramp down on an abusive payment practice to ambulatory surgical centers by Regence BlueCross BlueShield has been resurrected and attached in the House to another bill, Senate Bill 724, which passed the House on Friday. Read More >>

Shields Pushes to Empower DCBS as Effort to Put Insurance Under UTPA Flounders

Senate Bill 414 would give DCBS the authority to order insurance companies to pay meritorious claims to consumers, while House Bill 3160 — the push to put allow consumers and businesses to sue insurers for fraud under the Unlawful Trade Practices Act, which passed the House — is close to being dead in the Senate.
June 17, 2013 — Paul Terdal is not a lawyer, and he never intended on learning the Oregon insurance code backwards and forwards, but his sons have autism, and his health insurance company — Kaiser Permanente — wouldn’t pay for their prescribed treatment, applied behavioral analysis. Read More >>

Greenlick Ushers Stronger Rate Review Bill through House

Senate Bill 413 directs the Department of Consumer & Business Services and the Oregon Health Authority to add tools for cost containment to the health insurance rate review process, while insurers will also give consumers more notice when they seek rate changes.
June 13, 2013 — The House passed a bill that will give the Department of Consumer & Business Services new tools to challenge health insurance rates, while giving consumers more opportunity to participate in the process. Read More >>

Cambia Health Solutions’ Profit Climbs by 95 Percent

Its 2012 report shows continued decline in health insurance premium revenues
  June 14, 2013 -- Cambia Health Solutions is making less money from health insurance with every passing year. The Pacific Northwest insurance giant collected $7.4 billion in health insurance premiums in 2012 – down by $96.3 million from the year before. Since 2009, Cambia premium revenue has declined by 13.3 percent, according to financial documents obtained through public records requests by The Lund Report. Read More >>

Gatekeeper Program Trains Non-Health Professionals to Recognize Signs of Abuse, Neglect and Declining Health

The 25-year-old program also helps connect seniors and people with disabilities with basic social supports
June 14, 2013 – Often, the first person to notice that someone's health is failing, or that they’re in immediate danger isn't a doctor or a first responder – or even a family member. It’s someone who’s trained to recognize red flags and help people get connected with the resources they might need. That's the idea behind the Gatekeepers program run by Multnomah County. Read More >>

OHSU Scholarship Bill Passes Budget Committee Over Bates’ Objections

Sen. Alan Bates, an osteopathic physician and Democratic senator from Jackson County, said the bill was discriminatory because it gives money to students at Oregon Health & Science University and not the osteopathic medical school in Lebanon.
  June 13, 2013 — The Committee on Ways & Means on Wednesday passed Senate Bill 2 — giving $4.9 million in scholarships to Oregon Health & Science University for doctors and other healthcare professionals who agree to serve in rural and underserved areas.
 
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Bill Disclosing Toxics in Children’s Products Survives Budget Test

Fierce lobbying by the chemical and toy industries fails to kill the Toxics Disclosure for Healthy Kids Act, as the bill passes to the full House on a party-line vote.
June 13, 2013 — The toxic toys bill squeaked through the Committee on Ways & Means on a party-line 16 to 14 vote Wednesday, sending to the full House a measure that would require large manufacturers to report whether they use toxic chemicals in children products, then phase out those chemicals if they’re in toys that are marketed toward very small children. Read More >>

Billing, Provider Issues Top List of OHP complaints

After hearing a report on client satisfaction, Health Share of Oregon ran out of time for a scheduled brainstorming session on member engagement
June 13, 2013 – Billing issues, provider rudeness and access to primary care – particularly for people living with chronic pain – top the list of complaints that Oregon Health Plan patients have with providers and the plan itself, said Ellen Pinney, patient ombudsperson for the Oregon Health Authority, at last week’s meeting of Health Share of Oregon's community advisory council. Read More >>

Jenna’s Law Passes Legislature, Protecting Child Athletes from Repeat Concussions

The House Health Committee amended Senate Bill 721 to build in legal protections to volunteer coaches who act in good faith to comply with the bill’s intent, which is to educate them on the symptoms of concussions and keep children out of practice or games without medical consent.
  June 11, 2013 — The Oregon Senate passed an extension of Max’s Law to provide head injury protections to child athletes who play sports outside of school.
 
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Privacy Rights Can Threaten Physician-Patient Relationship

The author comments on Edward Snowden’s leak of top-secret documents asserting that we should demand a right to privacy, which is our fundamental intellectual and spiritual property.
OPINION – June 11, 2013 -- Edward Snowden’s dramatic leak of top-secret documents to Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald is jolting. While Congress and the White House express moral outrage over the laws he broke, we should give pause to Snowden’s wrenching statement. "The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change." Read More >>
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