Save Lives
The life you save may be your own.
Save California’s Rural Hospitals
Rural hospitals cover Emergencies in over 70% of California’s geographic area.
Issue:
California is putting hospitals in financial jeopardy by not paying costs required to provide healthcare for Medi-Cal patients.
Resolution:
Senate Bill 1423
Senate Bill 1423 would require Medi-Cal to pay designated Critical Access Hospitals the full cost of providing outpatient services. The result would be a boost for rural hospitals which would no longer lose money when providing care and services for Medi-Cal patients.
Urge your State Representatives and Governor Newsom to support SB1423 giving rural hospitals the funding they need to continue serving Medi-Cal patients and create a financially sustainable path forward.
Governor Gavin Newsom
1021 O Street, Suite 9000
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 445-2841
Contact the California Senate!
We need your assistance in reaching out to the Senate Appropriations Committee to encourage them to support SB1423. To make this process easier, use our letter generator tool to format your message to the Senator. Simply input your details, and then you can copy and paste the message into an email for sending.
A message from SoHum Health
Critical Access Hospital (CAH), is a federal designation given to rural hospitals that meet specific criteria. They are located more than 35 miles from another hospital (with some exceptions), have fewer than 25 acute care beds, and provide 24/7 emergency care services. There are 37 CAHs in California located exclusively in rural communities that generally, have low-income populations with higher rates of patients on Medi-Cal.
Under the current payment structure, Medi-Cal pays less than 20% of the total cost of providing outpatient healthcare services to some facilities. These services include emergency room, laboratory testing, blood draws, x-rays, CTs, ultrasounds, mammograms, MRIs, and more.
Several high-profile rural hospital closures, such as the recent closure of Madera County’s only emergency hospital, have fueled the urgency for this bill. Currently, two-thirds of CAHs are operating in the red, and their limited reserves are dwindling.
SB1423 will fix one of the root causes of the hospital financial crisis by increasing Medi-Cal payments to match current costs. Recent steps have been taken to give state loans to hospitals, but this does not solve the problem of chronic underpayment. Rather than giving loans to hospitals in financial distress they likely won’t have the means to repay, SB1423 will create a reimbursement model for rural hospitals that is sustainable.
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