Daily Lobo new mexico
wednesday September 10, 2014 | Volume 119 | Issue 18
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Hospital funds set aside for deficit
The heat’s about to rise
By Jonathan Baca
By Sayyed Shah
UNM Hospital is feeling the squeeze because of new health insurance policies. The hospital has reserved 22 percent of its annual revenue for the upcoming year to fund unpaid hospital bills caused by a variety of issues, including unreimbursed Medicaid treatments, said Ava Lovell, senior executive officer for finance and administration at the Health Sciences Center. New Mexico used to run a Medicaid program called Salud, but since Jan. 1 the state, in following the national health care reforms, changed that program entirely, now calling it Centennial Care, according to the New Mexico Department of Health website. “The change from old Medicaid to this new Centennial Care has been difficult. Human Services, Department of Health rolled out a new system including a computer system,” Lovell said. Because of the new system, all Medicaid enrollees had to re-enroll under the Affordable Care Act, switching from the old Medicaid to Centennial Care and enrollments of many new patients have caused issues, Lovell said. With the new computer system, UNMH is having problems getting reimbursed from Centennial Care because there are four companies in New Mexico handling Centennial Care billing for the state, she said. Many patients end up getting lost in the shuffle, and the bills never get paid, she said. “It is hard for people at a hospital like ours to know who to bill for that patient and so it is just kind of difficult right now,” Lovell said. “I know the state is working really hard to get that cleaned up but this is not only our hospital and doctors but across the state.” The New Mexico Hospitals Association had earlier claimed that some hospitals were on brink of closure due to the reduction in the financial capabilities, according to an Albuquerque Journal report. According to the latest figures issued by the Health Services Department, 709,322 New Mexicans were re-enrolled in the Medicaid program. In addition to losing funds because of the new insurance guidelines, many bills go unpaid when homeless patients or uninsured patients leave the hospital after receiving care, without paying their bill. However, Lovell said that is very typical for UNM. “We are the state’s safety net hospital, so it wouldn’t be surprising that we would do a lot of charity care, and included in that would be the working poor who cannot afford insurance but
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Grant betters computer networks
William Aranda / Daily Lobo / @_WilliamAranda
Members of the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico and other UNM students crumple up issues of newspapers in the basement of Sigma Chi House on Tuesday afternoon to build an effigy of the New Mexico State University Aggie. The Aggie effigy will be burned during Red Rally at Johnson Field on Sept. 18 at 8 p.m.
Red Rally
Sept. 18 Johnson Field, 6:30 p.m. The lighting ceremony starts at 8 p.m.
The Aggie to go up in flames By Stephen Montoya Students are putting two weeks of hard work into a large project, just to set it on fire and watch it burn. The annual burning of the Aggie is only a few days away, and the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico Lobo Spirit Volunteers said they are all fired up for this year’s Sept. 18 event. Tyler Wafer, a junior nursing student and head of the ASUNM spirit volunteers, said this event is in its 11th year, and celebrates the rivalry between the Lobos and the New Mexico State Aggies. The schools square off for their annual football game Sept. 20. “I don’t know who came up with the idea (to burn the Aggie), but it’s grown,” Wafer said. ”It’s gotten to be a bigger event, a staple event, that’s going here with ASUNM.” A member of the Lobo football team will be chosen to light the Aggie, he said. “One of the coolest parts is walking it through campus the morning of, at 7:30 and seeing it in the daylight, but watching it burn is obviously the best part,” Wafer said. Every year the Aggie is built in a different way and the changes have started to become their own tradition, he said. This year’s Aggie is built with two-by-fours, chicken wire, newspaper, napkins and spray
paint, he said. “We want to make sure it will burn, but we want it to burn slowly. We don’t want it to go up in five minutes,” Wafer said. The Aggie itself stands 12feet tall and, once placed in the structure, it will raise another seven feet, he said.
“I don’t know who came up with the idea (to burn the Aggie), but it’s grown. It’s gotten to be a bigger event, a staple event, that’s going here with ASUNM” Tyler Wafer ASUNM spirit volunteer “There are regulations we follow every year, the Physical Plant Department and Albuquerque Fire Department are out there, so it not us like, ‘Let’s do a fire,” Wafer said. The process of building the Aggie’s form normally takes 30 to 50 people over a two week span, said Ashley Hawney, a sophomore sign language major and
spirit volunteer. “Normally it would be a really sad thing to watch all of your work burn, but due to our rivalry, it really just brings up our spirit for our school and our hatred for theirs,” Hawney said. An estimated 500 people will arrive in the afternoon with a grand total of 1,500 by the end of the night, she said. “I plan to hopefully move up in Lobo Spirit, so this will be something that is under my control in the future but I would like people to take part in it in any sense,” Hawney said. Brenna Kelley, a sophomore journalism major, said this process is a lot of work, but she thinks it will turn out well in the end. “I definitely want it to look bigger and better this year,” Kelley said. “I don’t really have steam to blow off, but this is a really great way to get involved in my community.” Kelley is also a member of the UNM Marching Band and loves playing the fight song as the Aggie burns, she said. “UNM students should definitely come out and be prepared to have a lot of fun,” Kelley said. “I like seeing all of the glow sticks lighting up and seeing the Lobo spirit.” Stephen Montoya is the culture editor for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at culture @dailylobo.com or on Twitter @StephenMontoya9.
Researchers will have an easier time sharing information, now that a $498,000 grant will pave the way for better internal computer networks on campus. The grant was awarded by the National Science Foundation to create a separate research network, specifically engineered to support the changing, dynamic needs of researchers on campus, said Gilbert Gonzales, chief information officer at Information Technologies and principle investigator of the grant. “More so than ever before we have faculty that are working on interdisciplinary research projects all around the world, and they need to be able to share data, with our colleagues in Texas, California, Illinois,” Gonzales said. “We have to redesign our networks to make this more efficient for them to be successful.” This network will not be like the internet everyone knows — it would be private, and could potentially be ten times faster, allowing researchers to collaborate in real time on data sets that normally take hours to send, he said. “It’s like a Google Doc on steroids,” Gonzales said. Currently the University has only one network, the “production network” that every student and faculty member logs onto. This network was designed for general use, and has some serious drawbacks, including limited speeds and security requirements, since all the school’s finances are processed on it, Gonzales said. “That’s where you get to eBay, Google, the library, Yahoo and everything else,” he said. There is a need, Gonzales said, for a second, private and much faster network designed specifically for researchers on campus to share the huge amounts of data they collect and analyze. In addition to sharing data between departments on campus, the grant will enable UNM to link up with other networks around the world, like Internet2, a national research network for the higher education community, he said. “It’s a welcome activity, for a lot of our faculty. They want to know that their needs are being met, and that the University is preparing itself for these new demands: big data, genomics, working all around the country with faculty and researchers as if they’re sitting in the building across the walkway,” he said. The grant proposal was the result of collaboration between IT, Susan Atlas from the Center for Advanced Research Computing, and 14 faculty members from eight different departments. Hard sciences like biology, physics and astronomy will benefit from the new network, as well as the UNM Cancer Center and the Psychology department, Gonzales said. Physics professor and researcher Greg Taylor was a co-principle inves-
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