State highlights: Psychiatric care worries as Brooklyn hospitals close; working parents could lose Medicaid in Fla.; new phase of Calif. healthy families transition concerns some

A selection of health policy stories from New York, Florida, California and Oregon.

The New York Times: Brooklyn Hospital Closings A Blow To Psychiatric Care
Now the imminent closing of Interfaith Medical Center, a hospital in Bedford-Stuyvesant that is among the largest providers of acute psychiatric care in Brooklyn, is threatening the borough with a severe shortage of inpatient mental health care, other hospital officials said. With Coney Island Hospital still out of commission after Hurricane Sandy, the loss of the 120 psychiatric beds at Interfaith, which also handles about 67,000 outpatient psychiatric visits a year, is going to create a crisis, hospital officials said (Bernstein, 8/1).

Health News Florida: Working Parents Could Lose Medicaid
About 45,000 low-income working parents in Florida will lose their Medicaid coverage at the end of this year and become uninsured unless they quit their jobs, a coalition of children's advocacy groups says. KidsWell Florida says this is the surprising and unintended result of a change in the income-calculation system for Medicaid combined with the Florida Legislature's refusal to expand the insurance program for the poor under the Affordable Care Act (Gentry, 8/1).

California Healthline: Healthy Families Transition Concerns Heightened As Most Difficult Phases Start
The first two phases moving about 615,000 Healthy Families children to Medi-Cal managed care plans have gone relatively smoothly, with almost all of those children retaining their health plan and roughly 94 percent of them retaining their primary care physician, according to the Department of Health Care Services, which is overseeing the transition. Medi-Cal is California's Medicaid program, and Healthy Families is its Children's Health Insurance Program. The stark exception to "smoothly," however, has been an extended fight over the loss of coverage for a specific kind of autism treatment because of the transition (Gorn, 8/1).

The Lund Report: Quality Corporation Releases Reports On Quality And Utilization Of Health Care
The Oregon Health Care Quality Corporation released new reports last week scoring the performance of 335 hospitals, clinics, and primary care offices in Oregon. For the first time, the Quality Corporation also published scores on patient satisfaction, based on surveys collected from 10 primary care clinics (Waldroupe, 8/2).