A report by University of Georgia researchers shows that an Athens-area charitable health clinic is helping to reduce the number of unnecessary ER visits. The report examined 185 new patients who began receiving health care from the Mercy Health Center from Feb. 1 to July 31, 2015, and continued to do so for at least…
For each dollar that Georgia would have to spend on Medicaid expansion, it would gain $8.68 to $9.42 in federal spending, a new study said Monday. The report from the Urban Institute analyzes the potential costs and benefits for the 19 states (including Georgia) that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. If all…
Up to 5 million more Americans would have health insurance coverage if the 19 states that have not expanded Medicaid were to do so in 2017, a new study says. Among those states, Georgia would see the third-largest drop in uninsured people under Medicaid expansion, a figure of 509,000, according to the Urban Institute study,…
Seven Georgia urban markets saw general improvement in their health care systems from 2011 through 2014, according to a new national study released Thursday. But each of the seven metropolitan areas was ranked in the bottom half of the 306 U.S. communities evaluated in the Commonwealth Fund’s health system ‘’scorecard.” Atlanta received the highest ranking…
The bill may not get very far this year, with time running out in the General Assembly session and without the fiscal impact yet studied. But a Senate health committee broke new ground Wednesday by holding a legislative hearing on a proposal, Senate Bill 368, that would create a Medicaid expansion alternative in Georgia. The…
The number of uninsured Georgia children fell by more than 50,000 in 2014, the first year of full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, a new report found. That drop of 53,000 was the fourth-biggest decline in the United States. Yet it left Georgia still having 210,000 kids without coverage, the fourth-largest total in the nation,…
Revelations can happen anywhere. Georgia pharmacist Garrett Strawn’s flash of awareness came in a fairly mundane setting. He was in a glassed-in pharmacy at the rear of a big chain store in Rome. He was flanked by shelves loaded with pills and tablets, creams and ointments, injectables and inhalers that doctors prescribe for illnesses of…
As many travelers know from personal experience, it can be a challenge to get help for a sudden illness or injury if you and the local doctor don’t speak the same language. But vacation ills are a relatively infrequent problem compared with the misunderstandings and complications that come up repeatedly for people who settle permanently…
Healthcare Georgia Foundation has announced fourth-quarter grant awards to 20 nonprofit organizations totaling almost $1.5 million. The grants include funding to three evidence-based approaches to infant mortality prevention that target adverse birth outcomes in Valdosta, Clayton County and Albany. Citing the closures of hospitals and an emerging health care crisis in rural Georgia, Healthcare Georgia…
Lower Oconee Community Hospital in southeast Georgia has closed due to financial problems, becoming the state’s fourth rural hospital to do so in the past two years. The 25-bed “critical access” hospital in Glenwood, in Wheeler County, is looking to restructure, its CEO said in a statement. Some of the hospital’s 100 employees have been…