Category:

The Student Outreach Clinic at the University of Nevada, Reno has been around for 20 years. Yet, there's still a lot of people that don't know about it. The clinic provides free health care to patients, regardless of their ability to pay. So, whether you have insurance or not, you won't have to pay out of pocket in most cases. If you do have to pay for a visit, it's usually a minimal fee...the problem for people here locally is that...We are really under-doctored in northern Nevada in most specialty areas, especially in the primary care area. So, getting in to a physician may be something that's really difficult to do," he says...The entire clinic is run by students, most of which are in their first or second year of medical school, which means they're getting valuable hands-on experience that they wouldn't otherwise get.

A new hospital model is coming to the Las Vegas Valley...Dignity Health...plans four smaller neighborhood hospitals across the Las Vegas Valley in the next two years...The medical centers will have six to eight inpatient beds each, compared with the 120 to 330 beds inside Dignity's existing local campuses. They'll also house primary-care offices, full emergency departments, diagnostic imaging services and lab services. They'll cost about $25 million each to build...The idea is to shift less critically ill patients away from Dignity Health's regional acute-care centers...Dignity Health officials also hope to bring more primary care into underserved neighborhoods..."We want to focus our existing hospitals on much more complex care, and giving that care in an excellent way,"..."We're going to reach a point where our larger hospital platforms are going to be where you have people with catastrophic or major illnesses. A lot of people come to emergency departments with problems that may not meet the pure, clinical definition of life-threatening injury. We want to create a more streamlined way of giving them care."...Each hospital will create more than 100 permanent jobs. They're scheduled to open by summer 2017.

Wal-Mart Supercenter customers expressed shock, frustration and dismay Sunday night in the final hours before closure of the Nellis Boulevard store, one of the few grocery shopping venues for Nellis Air Force Base families and others who live nearby...Shock that the store was closing so suddenly — just two days after...Wal-Mart Stores Inc., announced that the store at 4350 N. Nellis Blvd. was one of the 269 stores slated for closure globally and the only one in the Las Vegas Valley...Frustration that they now would have to travel farther to buy groceries, fill prescriptions and pick up other goods.

“Right now we're kinda cramped, we're in a small trailer, we can't fit all of our staff yet. We actually have people who are waiting to come on board,” says Dr. Chris McDonnell...The 38,000-square foot building at 5th and Ralston will allow Northern Nevada HOPES to go from serving 600 patients to 10,000. One highlight is the dedicated pediatric pod with 12 exam rooms, two treatment rooms and a unique "care team center."..“Four care teams that will be in here and that will include a provider, a behavior health specialist, an RN, a medical assistant as well as a case manager,” says Sharon Chamberlain, CEO Northern Nevada HOPES.

If you were around three years ago when health care enrollment got underway in Nevada or better yet, tried to enroll, you know the problems that persisted for more than a year. At that time Nevada had contracted Xerox to run the system and it was a disaster...Now the state is faced with finding another entity to perform the task, and officials here say they are determined to not make the same mistakes...The (Silver State Health Insurance Exchange Board) dropped Xerox and went with the federal system to enroll residents in fall of 2014. But now comes word the feds want to charge our state for using their system..."They want to charge us 3% above the cost now; that could translate into $9,000,000," says Bruce Gilbert, Executive Director of the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange..."We are not talking about building something from scratch. We are talking to other states that have a state-based market place that are successful,"...Gilbert says nothing is set in stone yet. They don’t know what the actual price the feds will be charging to use their program...When that does happen...the board will seriously be looking at other options and bids to run the state’s health insurance enrollment plan.

Pam Perondi feels she's been blindsided by her health insurance provider, Prominence Health Plan..."It feels like bait and switch."...She says her open enrollment period was closing in mid-December. At the same time, Prominence was informing the Carson Medical Group, which includes the lion's share of the Carson medical community, it was cutting its compensation to them by a third....That was more than the medical group could absorb...Administrator Michael Lollich says the group held off for a week, hoping for reconsideration. Then on the 28th, they notified their patients they were no longer accepting Prominence insurance...The news came after the deadline for Pam Perondi and 700 others to make their decision...Carson Medical Group says it feels for its former patients...the group had no choice and the late notification left them with no time to work on a solution...Perondi isn't sure what she'll do now..."I'm just angry," she says, "and I feel sorry for all the others this has happened to."

The drugstore arms race on the Strip is ratcheting up another notch...Workers are building a roughly 20,190-square-foot CVS store near the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road, in front of Bally’s. The two-story property will have a pharmacy and is scheduled to open in May…It’s the latest Walgreens or CVS to land in the famed tourist-packed casino corridor, where the drugstores make big money — and pay big rents — selling medicine, food, alcohol and such Vegas-themed souvenirs as shot glasses, margarita cups, ash trays and gallon-sized flasks...This lucrative slice of commerce on the boulevard is only growing...CVS opened a store last year in the new three-story mall at Treasure Island and now has four outposts in the resort corridor, including the one at Bally’s.

With four days left in the sign-up period, Nevada's health insurance exchange is closing in on 80,000 customers...Nevada Health Link had enrolled 79,055 people by Saturday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday...The sign-ups include automatic renewals from 2015, though the federal government didn't break down numbers by existing versus new enrollments...With three days left until the Jan. 31 enrollment deadline, Nevada Health Link has already bested the 72,000 sign-ups it had a year ago.

A longtime Elko obstetrician whose medical privileges have been revoked has filed a lawsuit against Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital...Dr. George A. Winch Jr. and the Elko Women’s Health Center filed the complaint...The complaint alleges that “NNRH began a campaign to suspend and revoke Dr. Winch’s privileges from NNRH based upon pre-textual, wrongful and false grounds.”...Furthermore, it says the “defendants’ bad faith breaches of the implied covenant were done maliciously, fraudulently, and oppressively, with the wrongful intention of injuring plaintiffs, and acted with an improper and evil motive amounting to malice, and in conscious disregard of the plaintiff’s rights.”

Nevada officials on Wednesday assured advocates in Clark County that any process to privatize Medicaid services for the elderly, blind and disabled will move slowly and will be transparent...Advocates with Nevadans for the Common Good, a coalition of Las Vegas Valley institutions advocating for several issues including protection for vulnerable senior citizens...met privately with state officials. Attendees at the closed-door meeting included Richard Whitley, director of the state's Health and Human Services Department...Barbara Paulsen, leader with Nevadans for the Common Good, said the meeting was positive and that advocates were pleased with what they learned. She said the coalition's push for transparency and the Las Vegas Review-Journal's reporting to get the information on the potential switch out to the public may have had an "impact on the process."..."Our concern was that the decision was already made and it was just all going to go very quickly without getting any input (from the public)," she said Wednesday. "That doesn't seem to be the case."...After gathering information, state officials will develop a report that will be sent to the governor and the Legislature, she said. The governor would ultimately have to make a recommendation, which the state's Interim Finance Committee would have to approve, according to the legislation.

NOTICE OF TOWN HALL AND LISTENING SESSION ON MEDICAID MANAGED CARE EXPANSION OPTIONS

• 1/20/2016 Clark County Library - 1401 East Flamingo Road - Las Vegas
• 2/2/2016   Sahara West Library - 9600 West Sahara Avenue - Las Vegas
• 2/2/2016 Summerlin Library - 1771 Inner Circle - Las Vegas
• 2/17/2016 William Bee Ririe Hospital - 1500 Avenue H - Ely
• 2/19/2016 Humboldt General Hospital - 118 E. Haskell Street - Winnemucca