It’s 6pm on a Thursday at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center and already six area emergency rooms are too full to take any more patients. Ambulances are being diverted here—the only hospital with room—and Arrowhead is already close to capacity. The problem: too many people and not enough beds.
To help ensure that only critical patients end up in the ER, Arrowhead Regional also runs nine outpatient primary care clinics in the surrounding community - clinics whose patients are mostly poor or uninsured. But with the Governor’s proposed budget cuts, the non-profit hospital is faced with a 20 million dollar shortfall this fiscal year and they may be forced to close all nine clinics.
The healthcare industry warns the proposed budget cuts to Medi-Cal will not just impact Arrowhead’s patients, or even the poor and uninsured for that matter—but limit healthcare access for all Californians—even those with insurance will not be immune.
In order absorb the proposed budget cuts handed down by the Governor, hospitals may be forced to cut essential services —including closing facilities. Emergency Rooms are already stretched to the point of collapse, even before the proposed budget cuts, by absorbing the costs of caring for patients with little or no insurance. Currently, two-thirds of California’s 470 hospitals are operating in the red; 30 have closed since 1995; and twice as many ER’s have called it quits. By all budget accounts, there’s more to come.
Two cost cutting measures of particular concern are a reduction in Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) funds given to facilities to help offset care of care for the poorest residents and a 40 percent reimbursement reduction to Medi-Cal providers. The reduction of reimbursements to providers is the “biggest stake” in the heart of healthcare financing in California as it threatens the already shrinking number of physicians, dentists and facilities willing to treat Medi-Cal recipients, as reported in last week’s “California Connected.” The Sutter Medical Group of the Redwoods has announced that can no longer afford to see Medi-Cal patients.
It is a trend the healthcare industry warns will overwhelm an already teetering health care system as patients are forced to go to already impacted emergency rooms for primary care. To make matters worse, the Governor’s proposed budget has provisions that would effectively reduce Medi-Cal roles by an estimated five hundred thousand people. With no insurance, former recipients will be forced to go to emergency rooms for primary care—where hospitals are mandated to treat anyone who is ill.
A recent report released by the Federal Institute of Medicine shows that going without health coverage for even one year can have serious health consequences, even premature death. That’s because the uninsured, one out of every five Californians, usually forego regular checkups and diagnostic screenings due to a lack of access to healthcare. Budget cuts may only exacerbate this problem.