This blog has been created to provide a way to bring rural health bills to WRHA members' attention.
Anyone can contribute to the blog. We invite you to post information about upcoming state legislation which you may have received as part of other professional or political networks. We ask that you provide the number of the bill, a general description, and a brief comment on the impact. A web link for more information would be useful. Keep in mind the broad membership of WRHA, and rein in your partisan passion and professional pride. Our goal as WRHA is to provide information to help you as citizens participate in the interests of rural health as a whole system
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HB 2551/SB 2815 creates a non-profit association to collect assessments from insurers and TPAs to provide funding for the state universal childhood vaccine pool. State funding for the pool runs out in May, and while there are still LOTS of issues being discussed behind the scenes, it seems likely that a voluntary payment system in 2010 followed by a state-mandated assessment in 2011 (and beyond) will save the pool, which provides cost-free vaccines purchased at a discount through the CDC to all children in WA state.
ReplyDeleteHB 2828 requires hospitals to report certain health care-associated infections to the Washington state hospital association's quality benchmarking system.
Finally, in response to an Office of the Insurance Commissioner "interpretation" of long-standing carrier small group rating practices, there is a bill the insurance industry will be pushing to try to preserve the current system as much as possible. I won't get too detailed here, but given that I think rural areas have a high percentage of small group insurance, and that small employers will greatly prefer the current system to what the OIC is mandating, I wanted to raise the issue.