Connecticut Legislative Policy Framework

Choose Competitiveness!
PRIORITIES 2008

Introduction

Our Recommendations:
Spending and Performance
Transportation
Health Care
Education
Energy
Housing

Health Care
Health care costs continue to rise with no end in sight.  Driven in part by unhealthy lifestyles and uneven quality care, health care reform is long overdue.  First, let’s make Health our top priority.  Health care and health insurance are only tools to be deployed, not ends in themselves.  We should commit to the following goals:

“Connecticut will be the healthiest state in the nation, with individuals accepting responsibility for healthy living and high quality health care delivered by the most effective, efficient, safe, timely, patient centered and equitable health care system.  All residents will have access to health coverage that is universal, continuous, affordable to individuals and families, affordable and sustainable for the state and its employers, and that enhances health and well being.”

While we await the report of the Connecticut First Authority and the Primary Care Authority, there are five concrete activities that the Legislature should implement this year:

u Make prevention and chronic disease management a priority.  Connecticut should increase its investment in effective evidence based programs to prevent and reduce tobacco use and obesity and should increase the immunization rate of children and adults.

u Require health care providers to waive costs associated with serious preventable medical errors, specifically The National Quality Forum’s List of 28 Never Events, and to not seek reimbursement from the patient or third party payers.   

u Ensure an adequate supply of qualified allied health workers.  Connecticut must increase the supply of these professionals by developing the infrastructure to graduate more health care professionals and providing incentives to encourage more individuals to enter health care professions:

· Implement a regional pilot of a web-based centralized clinical placement system.  

· Develop a broad scholarship for service program.

  · Expand the availability of nursing and/or allied health distance learning courses.  Funding should be provided to Charter Oak College to implement this courseware.

  · Support increased salaries for community college nursing faculty. Two factors explain nursing faculty shortages. 1) Teaching faculty are required to have a Master’s degree; 2) Wages for teaching faculty are not competitive with the wages Master’s level professionals can earn providing direct care.  Furthermore, community college faculty members in high-cost areas like Southwest Connecticut earn the same as comparable faculty in low-cost areas due to statewide collective bargaining agreements.  We encourage the Community College System and its faculty unions to continue their efforts to increase salaries for nursing faculty by making salaries competitive in shortage occupations and negotiating greater flexibility to adjust compensation based on regional cost of living differentials.

· Develop a central resource for immigrants with foreign health care licenses to gain needed credentials. Immigrants who hold professional health care credentials in their home countries could help to fill gaps in the regional health care workforce, but many immigrants need “bridge” programs to help them connect to the training needed to gain employment in the health care industry or even gain accreditation in their profession.  

· Expand employer-sponsored, on-site, job-specific English as a Second Language (ESL) courses.  

u Provide cost and quality information to patients and health care purchasers to improve the decision making process when choosing a health plan, hospital, clinical practice, or treatment plan. During the past legislative session the Connecticut Department of Public Health and the University of Connecticut Health Center were authorized to develop a Connecticut Health Information Network plan.  The CHIN plan must be a robust statewide reporting system that reports medical errors, health care associated infection rates, volume of surgical procedures by type, and surgical outcomes for each health care provider. 

  u Continue to address the issue of Medicaid reimbursement rates.  While increased state funding investments were made last year the new Medicaid reimbursement for physicians is estimated at only 57 percent of the Medicare allowable rate for physicians.

The Business Council of Fairfield County
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