Politics

Over the next two weeks, Center Maryland will be highlighting the winners from the 2022 Maryland General Assembly.

MedChi’s CEO, Gene Ransom, and their lobbying team put together some big wins over the session for Maryland’s docs and public health. The physicians’ efforts were highlighted in the final budget, but the real power was in working with the insurance industry and hospitals in passing complicated legislation that ensures that Maryland physicians have some of the strongest risk protections in the nation. The increased support for physicians and their patients in the budget was due in no small part to the work of Ransom. Restoring several Medicaid reimbursement codes to 100 percent of Medicare has been a work in progress for several years for the association after budget cuts decimated the reimbursements. And, like most health care providers in the state, addressing the workforce shortages was a point of emphasis, which MedChi scored a solid increase in funding for the Physician Loan Assistance Repayment Program to help recruit and retain physicians.

Over the next two weeks, Center Maryland will be highlighting the winners from the 2022 Maryland General Assembly.

After an extraordinary 2 years of saving untold lives and caring for thousands of COVID patients, Maryland’s hospitals faced unprecedented workforce challenges throughout the state. Step in Nicole Stallings and the Government Affairs team at the Maryland Hospital Association (MHA) to highlight the needs of one of the state’s most important assets.

Throughout the 2022 session, Stallings and the MHA team were relentless advocates for Maryland’s hospitals. With big wins to support staff recruitment and retention efforts in addition to strengthening the loan repayment fund for physicians, physician assistants and nurses, the workforce wins in Annapolis addressed the top issues for the organization. This is in addition to legislation forming a commission to study the state’s health care workforce and a separate bill that requires a public awareness campaign on workplace violence awareness and prevention in health care settings. Over the course of the session, MHA’s team gave one more reason why Maryland’s hospitals and their staff have been real winners – and heroes – over the last two years.

Mayor Brandon Scott on Tuesday reacted to Baltimore’s 100th homicide of 2022 that occurred Monday evening in northwest Baltimore. “When you see what people are dying over, in this city,” Scott said. “When you see incidents of people being killed by folks that they consider friends and, in some cases, family, we know that we have a lot of healing to do in the city.” The murder happened in the Park Circle neighborhood near Druid Hill Park. The victim, a 61-year-old woman appeared to suffer from multiple signs of trauma.