Contents tagged with standardization
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Standardization can relieve administrative burden, if we can get there
The amount of time and money physicians and their staffs spend on the administrative tasks of medicine is astounding. A recent perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine quantifies it this way: “The average physician spends 43 minutes a day interacting with health plans about payment, dealing with formularies, and obtaining authorizations for procedures,” and physician practices hire coding and billing staff “who spend their days translating clinical records into billing forms and submitting and monitoring reimbursements.”
That translates to an annual cost of $361 billion spent on health care administration, and half of these expenditures are unnecessary.
The authors argue that standardization is key to reducing administrative costs, and much of this can be achieved through health information technology and electronic health records. Though they say the only entity with the “clout” to push through standards in medical transactions is the federal government, measures in the Affordable Care Act and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH)—like instituting regulations on payers and providing incentives to physicians and facilities—may start us on the right path when previous efforts have failed.
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HHS announces deadline for switch to ICD-10 codes, electronic transition standards
HHS announces deadline for switch to ICD-10 codes, electronic transition standards
Physicians must replace the current set of codes they use to report health care diagnoses and procedures with a … more