ALBANY, N.Y., January 22 – The Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) has proposed a health care reform plan that the association said focuses on long-term changes necessary to improve patient care and achieve lasting reform.

The plan, called Rational Efficient, Affordable, and Lasting Health Care Reform or REAL Health Care Reform, seeks to improve the efficiency and quality of health care by recommending significant structural adjustments to the states health system.

According to HANYS, the plan would:

Achieve universal coverage of children and cut the total number of uninsured in half by 2010 by simplifying eligibility and certification of coverage under Medicaid, Child Health Plus, and Family Health Plus; expanding outreach programs that enroll eligible people; and modestly expanding eligibility for Child Health Plus;

Require insurers to pay provider claims responsibly, and require an equitable investment of insurer revenues into the health delivery system to help support existing quality services and better enable the system to keep pace with the evolution of patent care;

Modernize the Certificate of Need (CON) program to better ensure outpatient facilities are subject to necessary oversight;

Develop coordinated chronic care management programs to improve and more efficiently deliver care to people with chronic health conditions;

Restructure long-term care to better support expansion of home and community-based services and housing options;

Restructure the Medicaid payment system to better promote the use of primary care;

Correct the dysfunctional medical liability system by providing sensible compensation, more promptly establishing an informed adjudication system, and promoting candid physician-patient communication;

Level the regulatory playing field to ensure that patient care and access to a comprehensive array of health services are not negatively impacted by the proliferation of freestanding, state licensed, for-profit ambulatory surgery and imaging centers, and private office-based surgical and imaging practices;

Move to a standardized quality measurement system that will better indicate the performance of providers;

Address workforce shortages.