New California strategy for medical assistance favors public health and organized plans.
In coming months, county governments in California will begin implementing regulations enacted by State Assembly that will change the settings for treatment of Medi-Cal (Medicaid) patients. The change will be dramatic, channeling medical assistance patients out of the offices of individual private practice physicians and into the offices of salaried doctors in public health settings or offices of doctors participating in organized health plans. Negotiated contracts with counties, institutions and non-institutional providers, patients, and fixed rates of reimbursement will become the parameters of medical service for providers of health care in the state's medical assistance program. For urban private solo practitioners in California whose practices rely heavily on publicly-supported patients, these changes hold a major threat, and for physicians throughout the nation it is a situation which should be watched carefully, because California is well known as a state which gives birth to changes that later appear in other states.
D002140:California; D003284:Contract Services / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D005376:Financial Management / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D008484:Medicaid / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008489:Medical Indigency; D014505:Urban Population