"The Indian Health Service faces, what IHS Director Yvette Roubideaux calls, a “new reality” requiring a business model to match this era.

For example the 2012 budget was $4.3 billion. But when third party collections and the Special Diabetes Program is added to that base, the funding totals $5.38 billion. Third party collections, mainly Medicaid, Medicare and insurance, are important because that money is “generated and kept” at each service unit.

And, better yet, that’s one line on the budget can continue to grow. Even as Congress threatens sequester or other budget cuts.

“We also must work on customer service – if more of our patients have insurance or other health coverage, we do not want them to go to other providers,” Dr. Roubideaux wrote on her blog. “Even though IHS is a ‘service,’ it is also a healthcare system, and we need to think like a business. We are encouraging every one of our employees to contribute towards ensuring that we provide the best quality of care and to maximize the resources we have to provide that care. No one in the IHS system can afford to ignore the bottom line. If our goal is to provide the best care possible, we need to ensure that we can survive in the changing health care marketplace in which our facilities must thrive.”"

Get the Story:
Medicaid funding is Indian health system’s ‘new reality’ and it can continue to grow (Mark Trahant 1/29)

Related Stories:
Mark Trahant: Indian Health Service faces devastating cuts (1/28)
Mark Trahant: Senate is best hope for Indian Country budget (1/24)
Mark Trahant: House Republicans shuffling the deck on debt (1/23)
Mark Trahant: Budget lessons from the Indian health system (1/22)
Mark Trahant: Republicans and old debts to Native Americans (1/18)
Mark Trahant: Republicans versus Republicans on budget talks (1/17)
Mark Trahant: Our big bad ugly budget problems can be fixed (1/16)
Mark Trahant: Why the fight over debt limit matters so much (1/15)
Mark Trahant: Counting on tribes to bail out the government (1/14)
Mark Trahant: Tribal leaders should prepare for shrinking budgets (1/7)
Mark Trahant: Deal makes another fiscal cliff debate inevitable (1/2)