President Obama signed the landmark health care reform bill yesterday, which will require the majority of employers (including medical staffing agencies) to pay a penalty to the government if they do not provide health insurance to their employees.

Temporary staffing firms are invited to attend the second national American Staffing Association (ASA) staffing law conference to learn how today’s laws will affect their businesses.

In fact, from April 20-21 in Washington, DC, ASA will offer attendees a full 90-minute briefing on the final health care reform legislation, and go into detail about what medical staffing firms will have to do to comply.

Other topics on the agenda include the following:

• Client indemnity clauses and other risks
• Background checks and negligent hiring
• Immigration developments
• Restrictive covenants and trade secret protection
• Union issues

A brochure, which includes full descriptions of all the conference sessions, is available online at http://www.americanstaffing.net/lawconference.

President Obama will sign the landmark healthcare bill into law on Tuesday, March 23. The House approved the Senate bill by a 219-212 vote yesterday evening. There was also a vote for a reconciliation bill, which was 220-211. No Republican voted for either measure.

The Healthcare Reform Bill will likely affect every man, woman and child in the United States. Here are just a few of the changes to come:

1. An estimated 24 million people who currently lack access to affordable health insurance through their workplace will be eligible for tax credits to buy their own insurance.
2. Nearly everyone who earns less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level  (estimated 16 million people) will become eligible for Medicaid.
3. Medicare will also see some changes that should deliver care more efficiently and come at a lower price. Whereas Medicare Advantage will likely lose $120 billion over the next 10 years.
4. In 6 months time, new insurance policies will have to allow children to stay on their parents’ plan until the age of 26.
5. Within 6 months, small businesses with fewer than 25 employees and average annual wages up to $50,000 will receive tax credits to offset the cost of buying insurance for their workers.
6. Within 6 months, all new insurance plans will have to cover the full price of preventative care, including annual physicals and children’s  immunizations. In addition, prior-approval will no longer be a requirement.
7. Children with medical conditions will no longer be denied coverage, and insurers will no longer be able to impose lifetime limits on benefits, nor will they be able to drop a person when they file a claim.

For more information on the healthcare bill’s changes, click on The Washington Post’s article: Obama to sign health-care bill into law Tuesday.

Advance for Health Information Professionals recently published an online article entitled: Beyond Transcription - Speech Recognition Holds Promise for Patient Care that discussed other ways the medical industry can use SRT (Speech Recognition Technology).

Although most MTs fear SRT will put them out of a job,this article delved into the voice-to-text technology, and its uses for patient follow-up, medication adherence and health screenings.

Specifically, some physicians are using speech recognition to “schedule calls to patients with customized questions and let the system do the data gathering.” The web-based calling systems listen for a human response and then communicate those responses to the physicians involved as well as record it on an Electronic Health Record (EHR).

Of course, some problems can arise when collecting the automatized data. Namely, the patient has to cooperate. Many patients don’t answer the phone or can’t complete the analysis because they are using their cell phones and cannot hear or are distracted. Also, the entire system relies on patients to tell the truth.

Caroline Rossi Sternberg, VP of Trends Analysis for the American Hospital Association, recently published a paper detailing the results of AHA’s annual hospital survey with some startling statistics. For the convenience of our healthcare factoring blog readers, we’ve summarized some of the survey’s findings below:

The housing market collapse in 2008 shook up capital markets for hospitals in late 2008, when 9 out of 10 hospitals reported that their ability to access tax-exempt bonds was nearly non-existent, and their short-term borrowing options had nearly dried up completely.

With less access to capital between 2008-2009, 71 percent of hospitals reduced capital spending, 40 percent scaled back on projects already in-the-works and nearly half decided not to go through with future projects (including renovations and updating aging facilities).

In addition, the drop in the stock markets also affected hospitals, as they saw an equal decline in their charitable donations.

Moreover, as more people lost their jobs, hospitals reported a moderate increase in the number of patients entering their doors without insurance or covered by Medicaid (which routinely underpays for procedures).

During this troublesome time, most hospitals were forced to make cutbacks by reducing staff and other administrative expenses in addition to reducing services that are traditionally poorly reimbursed (i.e. behavioral health, post-acute care, clinics and patient education).

For more information on American hospitals, visit the American Hospital Association’s Reports and Studies page.

Have a question about invoice funding that hasn’t already been addressed on The Factoring Blog? Mosey on over to PRN Funding’s Web site, where healthcare business owners and cash flow factoring professionals can find a wealth of information.

PRN Funding’s president, Phil Cohen, has been busy writing various articles about factoring over the last few months. Have you been keeping up? Check out the Factoring Industry News section of our web site for his most recent contributions.

Choose from article topics like…

1. Comparing Bank Loans to AR Factoring
2. Top Five Reasons to Factor
3. Factoring Fees Defined
4. Ways to Secure Funding in a Bad Economy
5. Benefits of Home Care Factoring

Happy browsing!

Did anyone happen to catch the article: The Disposable Worker in BusinessWeek last month? If not, don’t fret, the invoice factoring specialists from PRN Funding took the time to summarize some of the interesting article’s main points below:

These brutal economic times has prompted more companies to use temporary workforces. Utilizing temporary employees gives these companies the ability to add and let go employees quickly and easily, relieving them of any kind of fixed costs. Their approach has created an era of disposable workers that will cause lasting damage.

“Older people who lose their jobs are often forced into premature retirement, while the careers of younger people are stunted by their early detachment from the working world.” Through their actions, many employers are laying the groundwork for employees to become alienated and dispirited.

Moreover, there’s a new trend in upper management, in which bosses are no longer rewarded fpr the number of people they supervise. Rather, they are rewarded for short-term profit performance obtained with less staff.

In addition, the article explained how offshoring has increased during the recession. Economists believe that most jobs shipped overseas will remain offshore even when things start improving in order to help companies continue to keep costs down.

The article referred to the European temporary market model as a way to improve conditions in the U.S. At least in Europe, part-timers and temporary workers receive government health insurance and are required to receive wages and benefits comparable to permanent employees.

AMN Healthcare recently reached out to over 1000 Registered Nurses and asked them to complete a survey related to job-satisfaction, and the results are in:

1. 44% are ready to make a career change within 3 years
2. More than 1/3 are unhappy with their current job situation
3. Nearly 60% currently hold full-time permanent positions at a hospital
4. 15% plan to switch jobs if the economy improves within the next year
5. 28% said they agreed with this statement: “I will not be working in this job a year from now.”
6. 46% of nurses agree with the statement “I worry this job is affecting my health.”
7. 29% plan to leave the nursing profession completely within the next 1-3 years
8. 55% believe that the quality of care that nurses provide today has declined compared to when they started in nursing
9. 36% said they either would not recommend nursing as a career to young people or were not sure that they would

Click here to read the more results from the AMN Healthcare 2010 Survey.

James A. White recently blogged about the latest unemployment ratings last week for the Wall Street Journal. January’s rate was 9.7%, which came down from 10% in the previous two months. What PRN Funding found to be the most interesting was that health care sector added 14,500 jobs.

Moreover, it’s also important to note the continuing surge in temporary hiring. “Perhaps once the health care debate is settled some of these jobs will swap into permanent employment, but in the meantime firms are willing to take on workers but not at the expense of benefits on the way in or severance on the way out,” said Steven Blitz of Majestic Research.

According to a post that appeared on Staffing Industry Analysts North American Daily News, “Symbio Solutions, which operates a healthcare vendor management system, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week.”

Proceeds from the sale will go to 100-plus creditors, however, creditors that are entitled to receive funds may not get 100% of what is owed.

Plans call for an auction of the company later this month, and for the sale to close in February, Shifflette said.

Interesting enough, the post reported that Symbio first  ran into payment difficulties last summer after an issue rose with its former factoring company, Sun Capital.

Click here to read the entire post: VMS files bankruptcy, plans sale.

Advance for Health Information Professionals published their annual HIM professionals’ salary survey results in the December Issue (pages 12-15). For the convenience of The Factoring Blog’s HIM readership, we’ve included some of the more pertinent findings below:

• 90% of respondents are full-time HIM professionals (up from 88% in 2008)
• 64% of those who responded to the survey are employed as a HIM director, coder, MT or cancer registrar
• Only 19% of respondents indicated that they were working more than 45 hours/week
• 46% said their salary had NOT increased from 2008
• 8% said their salary actually DECREASED from 2008