YOUR PRIMARY SOURCE FOR PROFESSIONAL HEALTHCARE NEWS AUGUST 2013 / $5
SOU TH LOU ISIANA ED ITION
On Rounds Physician Spotlight
PHYSICIAN/HOSPITAL ALIGNMENT
Hospitals Face More Medicaid Cuts By TED GRIGGS
Dr. Hugo St. Hilaire Triple Threat
Hailing from Montreal, Canada, Dr. Hugo St. Hilaire was trained as a dentist, maxillofacial surgeon and plastic and reconstructive surgeon. But he truly is a triple threat at home, where he is Dad to two-year-old girl triplets and an 11-year-old son.... page 3
Another budget year, another cut in hospital funding. This year’s proposed Medicaid funding cut, $10 million, isn’t the largest Louisiana’s hospitals have faced. But the most recent hit is piled on top of the $254 million in Medicaid cuts hospitals have seen since 2009, said Sean Prados, vice president of the Louisiana Hospital Association. “I think when you look at it in the broader terms of what’s facing hospitals, when you look at what’s happened with the federal healthcare reform, and you look at the sequestration cuts, and you look at what’s happened with the state Medicaid side, and what we’re facing over the next couple of years in reductions and disproportionate share, the funding for hospitals for the next couple of years is going to be a tremendous challenge,” Prados said. Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration proposed the hospital funding reductions as part of roughly $52 million in healthcare cuts. Half of the cuts are in state funding, and the remainder from the federal government. Sean Prados In announcing the cuts, the state Department of Health and Hospitals said the agency faced a deficit in the current fiscal year, at current operating levels, unless changes were made. Most of the money will come from Medicaid. (CONTINUED ON PAGE 8)
Making the Marriage Work
Alignment & Integration Strategies to Strengthen Physician, Hospital Unions By CINDy SANDERS
ICD-10: Are You Ready? With the rapidly approaching ICD-10 ‘go live’ date of October 1, 2014, medical practices should be well on their way in preparing for the transition ... page 9
… And they all lived happily ever after. In fairytales, the two protagonists manage to overcome many barriers to ultimately ride off into the sunset … presumably for a lifetime filled with sunshine and roses. In the real world, we only have to look to divorce statistics to know that ‘wedded bliss’ frequently dissolves into angry recriminations, mistrust and broken vows. As it turns out, marriage makes for an interesting analogy to the wave of physicians, practices and hospitals rushing to the altar under the new world order of healthcare reform. Thanks to economic strain, the market has seen quite a few shotgun weddings lately. In other cases, such as some ACO affiliate agreements, the parties have opted to cohabitate rather than legally wed. And in some instances, the belief is that the union completes and complements each party to the ultimate benefit of both. No matter how the parties entered the relationship, once the honeymoon phase (CONTINUED ON PAGE 10)
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