Nonprofit Girl » health care

Can’t say I’ve heard a worse idea in a long time…

Christine — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:39:27 +0000

Statesman Journal opinion page: Make Oregon State Hospital Part of OHSU

Because…OHSU does such a great job caring for other vulnerable Oregonians?

Oregon Health Plan reservation list opens today, sort of

Christine — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:41:27 +0000

Adults who believe they may be eligible for OHP Standard can throw their names in the hat online; by mail, fax or in person; or by phone. [Forms: English, Spanish] More details here. Since it’s a State of Oregon website, there is of course no clear link to the online form as of yet; there is also no answer at the 800 number that was to become active at 7 am today, unless “you have dialed a number that is not available from your calling area” counts as an answer. Snow in Salem is my guess.

Update, 10:28 am: The online registration link has now been added to the DHS informational page.

Oregon Health Plan to accept new adult enrollments

Christine — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:13:37 +0000

For a limited time, the Oregon Health Plan will accept new adult enrollments, according to a January 7th DHS news release. OHP will be enrolling approximately 5,000 people into the Standard plan in order to replace members lost by attrition and bring the total number of enrollees back up to average levels. This is the first time OHP Standard has been open since 2004, and it won’t last long–people “who believe they might qualify for OHP-Standard” may only apply for the lottery between January 28th and February 29th. After that preliminary “Yes!! I am interested in having health insurance!!!” period, DHS will select applicants from the pool at random and mail them their behemoth of an application.

To editorialize on a related topic, according to our own DHS, 67,000 Oregonian children are eligible for OHP and not enrolled. When I think about the $$$ spent on failed Measure 50, I wonder what it could have done to spread the word about existing, funded services that are not being accessed.

Update: An article in today’s Oregonian reports that significantly more applicants may be accepted than DHS’s news release suggests, due apparently to budgetary surplus caused by lower enrollment levels.

State of Oregon launches hospital cost comparison site

Christine — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:52:18 +0000

I thought I must have misheard OPB reporters this morning when they discussed the release of the hospital cost comparison website; it didn’t show up on oregon.gov’s main page until later today. The home page for the project follows the state’s standard unnavigable format, which of course means that the most important information for consumers is also the hardest to locate and access. However, after several minutes of browsing around and following poorly-described links, I found it: you can compare hospital rates on a variety of procedures here.

Interesting things:

Data is from 2005 and apparently will be updated yearly, according to the fact sheet
Rural Oregonians, who already know they don’t have a lot of options when it comes to choosing hospitals, might be disappointed to see how little data is available on a lot of small-town hospitals
When I checked the rates on the two surgeries I had last year, I learned that my hospital of choice, Providence St. Vincent’s, is about twice as expensive on average as other local hospitals