In four short years, Arizona went from the state with the best health-care coverage to the worst in the nation.
Right now, stakeholders are in Tucson brain storming over the Affordable Care Act. If it’s repealed, how it would impact patients, doctors, hospitals, and insurers.
Jim Hammond — publisher of the Hertel Report, which is hosting the summit — says everyone’s chief concern is leaving a gap in patient coverage.
“People will delay care or just not pay their bills, which leads to financial instability," Hammond said.
Compounding Arizona health-care problems is the two-year-old law requiring medical providers to track performance, which he predicts will force doctors in smaller practices out of business or "their doctors may be working for a hospital system, or joint venturing with another doctor’s office combining and creating a larger practice," he said.
Sending Arizona patients to physician assistants or nurses for routine procedures, all of it is at the center of the summit, continuing in Phoenix on Friday.
