The Washington Association of Community & Migrant Health Centers is sponsoring an apprenticeship program for medical assistants, with a special 50 percent scholarship match for hospital employers in King County that participate in the June cohort. The 12-month program trains medical assistants while they work full-time, helping hospitals and health systems reduce cost by increasing retention rates, and making workflow more efficient by freeing up nurses and providers to work at the top of their scope of work.... Read More >>

Friday was cutoff for bills to be voted out of their original policy committees in Olympia. To make it easy, we’ve listed all of the major bills we’ve been tracking.... Read More >>

Membership update from the February 23, 2017 Weekly Report.... Read More >>

Recent member news from the February 23, 2017 Weekly Report.... Read More >>

Washington Hospital Services Industry Partner Para Healthcare has provided WSHA members with an information sheet detailing the error, as well as suggestions for a workaround and likely corrections to come.... Read More >>

The past month has been one with exceptional volume of very ill patients coming to our emergency rooms and clinics, with many needing advanced care in the ICU. This flu season has ended the lives of many the likes we have not seen since 2010. This is 172 people’s lives cut short by this very deadly disease.... Read More >>

St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane recently added a virtual reality driving simulator to help patients get back on the road following injuries, and back to their independent daily activities. The simulator is the only one in the region and gives patients realistic scenarios to regain confidence without the stressful hazards of on-road driving.... Read More >>

Effective March 8, hospitals, including critical access hospitals, must notify Medicare patients when the patients are placed into outpatient observation status. Hospitals must provide oral and written notification through the use of the standard Medicare Outpatient Observation Notification (MOON) form. On February 22 from 12-1 p.m., WSHA will provide a members-only webinar to help hospitals with implementation.... Read More >>

This week in Olympia, WSHA testified on HB 1854, which would require the Medicaid managed care plans to assemble an adequate and appropriate network of covered SNFs, monitored and enforced by the Washington State Health Care Authority. It would also create an incentive to place patients at a SNF by creating new fees on the plan if it has not placed the patient in a reasonable amount of time.... Read More >>

An estimated 28.2 million U.S. residents (8.8%) lacked health insurance when surveyed during the first nine months of 2016, according to a report released February 14 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The uninsured rate for adults under age 65 was 9.3% in Medicaid expansion states (like Washington State) and 17.5% in non-expansion states. ... Read More >>