UMMC has long partnered with Rochester General Hospital on patient care, and the two hospitals are exploring ways to work together more closely, according to hospital spokeswoman Colleen Flynn.

But, she said, contrary to a rumor reportedly circulating among staff, there are no merger discussions taking place.

There aren't even immediate plans to form a formal partnership, known as a ACO (accountable care organization) under the Affordable Healthcare Act.

RGH has long helped UMMC recruit doctors and provide patients with specialized care, and the two hospitals are looking into ways to share those services even more, but that's as far as the talks are going, Flynn said.

An ACO, according to Wikipedia, is a coordinated group of heath care providers who commit to standards of quality care in order to reduce the total cost of health care and reimbursements.

UMMC is always looking for ways to improve patient care and provide more specialized care, Flynn said.

"We're an independent community hospital and we're going to be an independent community hospital," Flynn said. "We look for larger organizations to partner with because we're small."

To help address a possible shortage of primary care physicians in the future, UMMC today announced a partnership with Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine to transform the local hospital into a teaching hospital.

UMMC completed a credentialing process by American Osteopathic Association in August and will begin accepting medical students in residence in 2013.

“This is an exciting moment for United Memorial Medical Center,” said President and CEO Mark C. Schoell (top photo). “As a teaching hospital, United Memorial will be at the forefront of the latest medical developments and be able to provide improved quality of care; advanced treatment therapies; a shorter length of stay for major illnesses; and achieve superior outcomes and survival rates for our patients.”

Dr. Anna Lamb, herself an osteopathic doctor, said the announcement today is "awesome" news for Batavia.

"We need to grow our own," Lamb said. "We’re going to have significant primary care shortage in the next few years as some of our physicians are getting a little older. We have to grow our own. Batavia is just not on people’s radar, so we have to get people in here to see it, to like it, and as Dr. Terry said, 'if we grow our own, they’ll stay here.'"

Dr. Richard Terry also said that local kids with medical aspirations will now have a way to complete their education locally and stay in their hometown, if they choose that route.

UMMC will use a variety of incentives, such as student loan repayment, to help convince residents to stay in Batavia and become primary care physicians.

Many young doctors, Schoell said, no longer want to go into private practice and would rather work for a medical institution.

The reason, he said, are reductions in government medical reimbursements, increasing regulation and the difficulty inherent in owning and running your own business.

There will be four residents accepted for each year of the program (for an eventual total of 12). They will reside in the community and receive compensation and benefits from United Memorial while participating in the program.

Serving as program director for United Memorial is Laurie Kilbury-Taylor, D.O.  Dr. Kilbury-Taylor is an emergency room physician at United Memorial with the group FDR Medical. She is a graduate of the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and holds additional degrees including a master of science degree from the State University of New York-Roswell Park Division, and bachelor of science degrees in Biology and Engineering.

The first year of residency emphasizes the inpatient experience. For second-year residents,a significant emphasis is placed on taking more clinical responsibilities and enhancing decision-making skills. There are four months of inpatient medicine where residents are the primary physicians for their patients.

Each resident will manage his/her own inpatient service with supervision by an attending physician. The third-year resident has a significant role in teaching and supervising junior residents and assumes direct responsibility for leading the Medicine Teaching Service and Family Medicine Inpatient Teaching Service.

Individuals who have completed a baccalaureate program and wish to pursue a career as a physician in the United States must be accepted to and complete an additional four-year course of study at an accredited osteopathic medical school in order to continue in the osteopathic residency program.

Already burdened by a seemingly intractable unfunded mandate in Medicaid, Genesee County isn't being burdened much by the Affordable Healthcare Act, according to County Manager Jay Gsell.

Even the provisions treating the county as an employer, which have been in effect for two years, Gsell said, have had negligible impact on the budget.

While the act, often referred to as Obamacare, is increasing the size of the pool of local residents who have health care coverage under Medicaid, Gsell said if the state follows through on seeking funding from the federal government, county taxpayers won't be shouldering that burden.

The act requires states to offer Medicaid to people with annual incomes of 133 percent of the poverty rate or less, Gsell said, and NYS already offers Medicaid at 150 percent of the poverty rate.

Also, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has already instituted insurance exchanges.

With those two criteria being met, the state should receive funding from Washington to cover increases in Medicaid coverage, if the state applies for it.

The state will cover the increases in administrative costs, Gsell said, for new Medicaid recipients.

Gsell said the new group of people who will be covered by Medicaid have traditionally just gone without medical coverage, meaning they get no preventative care and seek only emergency care that the hospital can only write off as "charity care."

Now these people can establish a relationship with a doctor or clinic, get check ups and physicals and better monitor their health concerns.

"From a community standpoint, I think that's better health care," Gsell said.

This entry concludes Sunday's article on the comments of Victor DeSa, M.D., who spoke to senior citizens at Batavia's First United Methodist Church last week.

Please remember, this is a summary of DeSa's presentation and does not necessarily reflect the views of The Batavian:

Medicare, Medicaid and senior services

By requiring insurance companies to expand coverage, the new health care law will drive costs up, according to DeSa. The government has told consumers that these costs will be offset by subsidies for people making less than $80,000 per year.

These subsidies will be coming, in part, from a $500 billion cut from Medicare -- and that's where senior citizens and others eligible for Medicare should be concerned.

But this is not the only problem. Both Medicare and Medicaid, which DeSa called "the original two public options," have met with disaster. Medicaid has already failed, and Medicare is on the brink of failure.

"The government has no idea how to handle the rising costs. Their idea of handling the costs is to take a machete to (the programs) and cut."

Dr. Victor DeSa talked with seniors Friday about the federal government's new health care legislation. This followed his hour-long presentation, sponsored by the "Older Adult Ministries" program of Batavia's First United Methodist Church.

DeSa is a retired surgeon who had a private practice in Batavia for many years and currently serves on the United Memorial Medical Center Board of Directors. He is well renowned and respected in the community and very knowledgeable about how the health care field works -- including the role of legislation and the relationship between health care and the government.

There is a lot of misinformation about the new health care law and how it could affect  people -- especially Medicare and Medicaid recipients.

The doctor expressed disappointment in the mainstream media's handling of the topic.

"The people in the media are not doing their job," DeSa said. "The media used to look out for the common man, but now they have a bias and a preference. (Consequently), the news we get is filtered and we don't have all the information we need in order to make informed decisions."

For those who could not be there, here's the gist of DeSa's presentation (it will be divided into two parts for the reader's convenience) -- it reflects the arguments he made based on careful and meticulous research, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Batavian.

In the little town of Scituate, Rhode Island, everyone has primary health coverage -- even the people who can't afford health insurance.

No, Scituate hasn't become an experiment in some single-payer scheme. People in the town banded together and figured out how to make it happen.

The people of Scituate, Rhode Island did it themselves.

No, we don’t give away health insurance – that’s too darn expensive. Instead, we make sure everyone who lives here has primary care (which only costs $25 a month). By coupling together grants, and a little money from the town, and doing bake sales and walk-a-thons, something called the Scituate Health Alliance decided, 10 years ago that we could fix the health care system ourselves – or, more accurately, build one from scratch — by providing primary care medical for everyone in town who doesn’t have insurance. (We also do flu shots for anyone in town who wants one and organize prenatal classes for anyone who is pregnant.)

While the effort isn't without taxpayer support (read, grants and money from the town), it does show how a community can come together to provide a service.

"We can't afford to wait" vigils  are organized nationwide just days before members of Congress return to Washington, to make sure they know that an overwhelming majority of voters are counting on them to act quickly to pass health care reform.

The vigils will put a human face on the urgent need for bold health care reform with a real public health insurance option. We'll deliver an unmistakable message to the media and members of Congress: We can't afford to wait: Public Option NOW!

7:30pm, Wednesday, Sept. 2.

Corner of Central & Walden Av. (Old Valero Station)
Lancaster, NY 14086

Not only has Republican Assembly member Greg Ball (who's running for Congress against Democrat John Hall in NY-19) been getting government-paid, single-payer health care for most of his adult life via the Air Force and now the State Assembly, he also fondly recalls how the Kennedy family paid for his health care when he was a child.  (NYDems Dispatch )

Isn't it amazing how children and health care can cross the lines of party politics?

One of my favorite blogs about rural issues, the Daily Yonder, carries this:

What promised to be a consensus-building search for solutions for American’s unsustainable fragmented health problems has turned into a debacle. Make no mistake about it, this is the fault of the President — no one else.  I say this as a supporter of President Obama. I’m a lifelong Democrat. I voted for Barack Obama with enthusiasm and I still have his bumper sticker on my car and pickup truck.

And

I can tell you that his first mistake was to discount the good advice he was getting from rural Senators on both sides of the aisle. Obama is an urban president and he’s been looking to the coasts for direction. He should be looking more to the Plains.

Read the whole thing.  It's a disappointing and disturbing assessment. If the president really screwed the pooch on health care, it will cast a pall on the next three years of his presidency. That's not good for the country, whether you like the president or not or are a localist or a nationalist or not.

This is a quote from our President speaking on those who attempt to expose the realities of the healthcare plan.

“There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end-of-life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain e-mails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an e-mail or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

What exactly is the White House going to do with the information they gather on these e-mailers and website creators?  This is not about clarification of the facts, this is about building a database of dissenters.  This should put to rest all the talk about former presidential abuses of power.  This president has overreached his authority more in 6 months, than any other president in history.  Mr. President, members of both houses, please stop the rhetoric and give the American people the transparency promised during the campaign.

Here are a few items brought to my attention by Neal Boortz about the democrat health care proposal.

- Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said "The health care overhauls released to date would increase, not reduce, the burgeoning long-term health costs facing the government,"

Don't believe me? Here's the link.

-"According to that assessment [from the CBO], enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010-2019 period."

Don't believe me? Here's the link.