By Ariel Hart and Andy Miller Facing the looming closure of a hospital in East Point, Fulton County officials and Grady Health System representatives are discussing ways to continue providing for emergency and hospitalization needs in the underserved south county area. Among the options: Raising the amount of money Fulton County taxpayers provide to the…
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.) said Monday that the health insurance provisions in the social policy and climate change bill pending in Congress would be a “game changer’’ for Georgia. The $1.7 trillion legislative package, which recently passed the U.S. House, would offer coverage in the health insurance exchange for hundreds of thousands of Georgia…
Plenty of shopping options, plus lower prices. That’s usually a winning formula for consumers. And that scenario describes how Georgia’s health insurance exchange is shaping up for individuals and families looking for coverage in 2022, according to initial filings by health insurers to the state’s insurance department. The filings were obtained by GHN through an…
By Jeremy Redmon This article is reprinted with permission from the AJC. Since it opened in 2015, the Clarkston Community Health Center has attracted long lines of impoverished patients, at times becoming so busy that it has been forced to turn some away. The volunteer-run nonprofit has provided free care to more than 5,500 immigrants, refugees…
Grady Memorial Hospital ranks first, and Piedmont Hospital last, in a report rating the 10 largest nonprofit Atlanta/Athens area hospitals on their spending on charity care and other community health initiatives. The “Fair Share’’ ranking, from the Lown Institute, was released this week and has already generated controversy. The rankings compared a hospital’s charity care…
Frank Berry is retiring after six years of heading the state’s main health care agency. He will be replaced by Gov. Brian Kemp’s deputy chief of staff for operations, Caylee Noggle, who will take over as commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Health (DCH) on July 1. Berry, 55, has been Community Health commissioner…
On any given day, Mercy Care’s facility in Atlanta gets more walk-in traffic from patients seeking dental care than the health center can handle. Getting a behavioral health appointment can take months, and if patients need vision care, they are referred to Mercy Care’s Chamblee facility. The Atlanta safety-net provider is getting an injection of…
Amy Bielawski is hoping for what seemed unlikely a year ago. Back then, the Trump administration approved Gov. Brian Kemp’s Medicaid waiver plan for Georgia. The plan would have added some people to the state’s Medicaid rolls, but it also would have set up new eligibility requirements for the program — such as employment or…
Georgia’s move to add some low-income adults to Medicaid appears threatened as the Biden administration moves to eliminate work requirements for coverage under the government program. The White House on Friday was expected to notify states that it plans to revoke Medicaid work requirements, Politico, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal reported. And…
One of the biggest carrots in the 2010 Affordable Care Act was a promise that the federal government would pay 100 percent of the costs of a state expanding its Medicaid program for three years. A group of mostly Democratic U.S. senators — including Georgia’s newly elected Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — is pushing…