Posted on 08/22/2005 2:46:42 PM PDT by kerrywearsbotox
The federal government and commercial-software developers are offering doctors and medical clinics low-cost -- and sometimes free -- electronic medical-records software, hoping to spur the expansion of networked physicians' offices around the United States, experts told UPI's Networking. By Gene Koprowski
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
bttt
They are being forced, by the government, to make this change to electronic records that has nothing to do with the internet. As a result, they are having to pay enormous costs to convert their records and buy tons of software and management programs and train all the people in their offices.
The Clinton HIPPA laws are adding to the health costs of Americans.
This unfunded mandate has caused doctors, hospitals, clinics, and insurance companies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on "HIPPA" compliant software upgrades that do not aid patient care. These upgrades simply create another cottage industry of HIPPA auditing companies, software producers, and training which does not improve patient treatments but adds more hours of bureaucracy to the work day.
However, no one pays for each bright idea that is forced upon on healthcare system by government. The costs are passed along to consumers.
Not all the software companies got a bonus from HIPPA, some of us (that didn't make core medical software but generalized software that happens to also be used by the medical community) had to jump through a lot of expensive hoops too.
While you're right about unfunded mandates costing millions of dollars, you're wrong about doctors passing the costs on to consumers (we call them patients, of course).
Most of us are locked into fixed reimbursement rates from a handfull of mega-carriers (United Healthcare, Aetna, etc.). We get the co-pay ($10 to $15) and later whatever the insurance company decides to pay on our claim, then we must write off the balance.
Except for a few remaining high-paying specialties (Orthopedics comes to mind), most of the doctors I'm familiar with are averaging collections of about $0.35 on the dollar.
And, no, I don't expect ANYONE to be sympathetic.
Insurance compnaies have been doing it for years, and not just through the records of their clients but anyone who goes to one of the providers used by their clients. HIPPA means nothing to those parasites.
That should read "companies". Angry typing = mistakes.
Epic Systems, a Madison, Wisconsin based software company is one of the fastest growing companies in the country and has developed one of the better products along with Cerner, a competitor.
Sure HIPPA is part of the reason, but the clinics themselves are happy to reduce racks and racks of files to a server with a backup. Think about it, banks did this years ago with bank statements and this is not much different in terms of paper retention. Its not always as clandestine as you might think.
They are converting because they are being forced to do it or they will not receive payments from Medicare or Medicaid. You may disagree with the premise but it doesn't alter the facts.
Yes I do disagree. Many of the clincs began converting well before the government ever opened their yap about EMRs. It had nothing to do with Medicare or Medicaid. In fact, some do not treat either payor, they simply saw the need to eliminate storage costs and streamline operations. In addition, many larger commercial insurers and HMOs were able to review billings more quickly. This isn't something that just happened with HIPPA.
Do you have any solid numbers on the clinics which started converting their records more than 7 years ago?
I know of some large multi specialty group practices that began that long ago.
You are correct.
What I meant about passing costs along to patients is that the price for services rise.
I always tell my patients this when the topic of insurance comes up...
Do your insurance premiums go up every year?
Yes, of course.
Do insurance payments to doctors and hospitals go up every year?
Yes. No they don't. We are paid 25% less by BCBS they were were 10 years ago.
So if your premiums go up and reimbursements to doctors and hospitals go down; where does the money go?
BCBS and others have turned to 'for profit' insurance companies and now have multi-billion dollar yearly surpluses and hand out dividends to stock holders. Wellpoint alone had $20.72B in profits last year.
On Blue Cross Rate Increases in Wake of Wellpoint-Anthem Merger - Blue Cross patients have been stuck with unprecedented rate increases of 20-30% and more as well as benefit reductions.
http://www.ftcr.org/healthcare/fs/fs005043.php3
http://home.austin.rr.com/austintxmd/Pages/zanthem.html
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