OUR POLICIES

Workforce

Increase the supply of qualified healthcare providers practicing in the state of Georgia through increased medical education opportunities, thoughtful accreditation and practice standards, and expanding the use of physician extenders.  Ensure that healthcare workers can perform their duties to the best of their ability by allowing them to use the most medically prudent practices and protecting their physical safety while at work.  Continue to partner with the state on efforts to recruit new physicians to practice in Georgia particularly in provision of primary care and underserved communities.

Paul Hinchey, President and CEO at St. Joseph’s/Candler in Savannah and Ronald Dean, President and CEO at South Georgia Medical Center in Valdosta discuss the importance of hospitals for Economic Development and the effects of the Healthcare Workforce Shortage crisis on hospitals and communities in Georgia.

Paul P. Hinchey, President and CEO, St. Joseph’s / Candler, Savannah

Ronald E. Dean, President and CEO, South Georgia Medical Center, Valdosta

Access

Expand the delivery of quality healthcare available to all Georgians regardless of their ability to pay.  Implement funding mechanisms that provide full reimbursement to providers of medical services to all populations.  Ensure patient access to quality healthcare services by protecting the state’s healthcare workforce and organizations from meritless and excessive legal claims.  Use innovations in technology, such as telemedicine, to increase access to all areas of Georgia.

Community Benefits

Enhance Georgia’s communities by supporting future growth and population health by maintaining access to quality care.

Essential Services

Continue to provide tax exemptions that allow not-for-profit hospitals to provide essential but unprofitable services, such as emergency care, trauma, perinatal services and physician residency programs.  Create a sustainable, statewide trauma network that provides timely, life saving care to victims of traumatic accidents.  Increase funding for healthcare training.  Including funding for healthcare training, including funding for additional medical school and graduate medical education slots.

Quality of Care

Continue to improve the quality of healthcare outcomes for patients, including the goal of eradicating medication errors and hospital infection rates while guarding against unnecessary and ineffective legislative and regulatory burdens.

Regulations

Allow Georgia’s not-for-profit hospitals, health systems and hospital authorities to provide care in the most prudent method possible by writing and amending laws in a manner that recognizes the operational and structural difference between hospitals and other governmental entities.  

Healthcare Planning

Support continued state health planning through the Certificate of Need program. Support Georgia’s traditional healthcare planning process to endeavor to prevent overutilization and inflationary cost increases.  Develop health care facilities in a manner that enhances access to quality health care, prevents the unnecessary duplication of services and contains costs.

Medicaid and Medicare

Improve reimbursement levels for all Medicaid & Medicare providers, including supplemental payments for uncompensated care from the Indigent Care Trust Fund.  Redesign the state’s Medicaid program in a manner that directs the maximum to providers of medical services while lessening the administrative and regulatory burdens.  Avoid expanding the current Medicaid managed care program to new populations until significant improvements can be shown in the areas of coordinated care, contract enforcement and timeliness of claims payment.  Implement a system of patient-centered, whole-person, coordinated care for Medicaid members that is driven and operated by providers, either on a regional or statewide basis, and measured by quality outcomes for patients.  

Private Insurance

Increase the number of patients with private insurance through the creation of an insurance exchange that is tailored to best suit the needs of Georgia’s citizens and healthcare providers.

Taxes

Continue to support the improved Hospital Financing Program until an alternative source of funding Medicaid provider payments becomes available.  Continue to educate policy makers on the benefits not-for-profits are able to provide the communities they serve as a result of dollars saved by state and local tax exemptions.  Encourage the continued strength and growth of the healthcare job market through tax policy that allows hospitals to expand services and provide tens of thousands of career opportunities.  Implement tax policy that encourages hospitals to expand services and continue to create quality jobs.