It’s not just doctors being screwed.
About a third of hospital nurses’ time is spent on documentation, rather than patient care. Obviously you need documentation - medications and care given, patient actions and condition, but a third of the time is ridiculous. This is not counting unpaid time - new nurses, and nurses who were swamped by a high patient load or events often spend two or three hours after their shift finishing up their documentation. Don’t even try to get paid, you’ll be told how you need to be more efficient, get written up, lose your job. So, there are some super-efficient nurses, and there are nurses who will cut what corners they can out of patient care, and go home at 730.
My guess is that at least half of medical costs in this country are for the paperwork alone. Insurance companies like to boast that 85% of their fees go to patient care. But the hospitals and providers take that 85% and spend a huge chunk of it on insurance paperwork, government paperwork and CYA.
You have your aides and techs being screwed - 14.50 an hour for soul-draining, back-breaking work. Can’t find Americans for that? Lots of Jamaicans, Africans, Filipinos in the world.
Patients screwed of course. Taxpayers screwed.
Everyone being screwed except for hospital and insurance administration, lobbyists and politicians and government workers.
I have worked in hospitals/medical laboratories for decades. The number of tests we receive are being cut (don’t ever believe that wellness tests are growing)and our reimbursement for the tests we are still getting is being cut. Obamacare is a total disaster. I am truly afraid our medical infrastructure will be unsalvageable when Obama finally exits the national stage......if we can ever pry him out of the WH.
As it happens some of my kin are physicians.
They claim over 90% of Medicare/aid could be done at NO CHARGE if there were no paperwork. They would be ahead.
The ophthalmologist tells of a simple procedure that cost less then $10 but only 80% + effective spray; replaced by a better(?) $1000 procedure 90%+ effective but requiring a direct injection to the eye. A multi course treatment often abandoned and sadly they go blind!
Everything figured in;time, sterile gowns, equipment...they receive about half of cost.