News
US Physician Practices Spending Nearly
Four Times as Much as Canadian Practices
Interacting With Payers
Morra, D. Healh Affairs, 8/3/2011
Results of a survey, published today in the journal Health Affairs, show that U.S. Physician Practices spend approximately 4 times as much as their counterparts in Canada (costs in staff time and other resources) interacting with multiple payors. Ironically, the more Payors 'managed' Practices, the higher the costs were for U.S. Physician Practices.
Other Key Findings of the article include:
- Physician practices in the United States spent $82,975 per physician per year interacting with payers, compared with $22,205 in Ontario.
- If U.S. physicians had administrative costs similar to those of Ontario physicians, their total savings would be approximately $27.6 billion per year.
- In the U.S., nurses and medical assistants spent 20.6 hours per physician per week on administrative tasks related to health plans, nearly 10 times the 2.5 hours spent by Canadian nursing staff. U.S. nursing staff spent more time in every category of interactions, most notably obtaining prior authorizations, which accounted for 13.1 hours per physician per week.
- Very little time was spent submitting quality data in either the United States or Ontario.
HHS proposes privacy rule on medical records
Publish Date: June 1st, 2011
By: Anna Yukhanano
Article Source: BenefitNews.com
WASHINGTON | Tue May 31, 2011 4:52pm EDT (Reuters)
Patients could obtain a list of everyone who has accessed their electronic medical record under a rule proposed Tuesday by the Department of Health and Human Services.
(read more)
Patients more comfortable with doctors who use EHRs
Publish date: May 26th, 2011
By: Ron Rajecki
Article Source: ModernMedicine.com
Good news if you use an electronic health record (EHR) system-and a tip on how best to use it, courtesy of the Sage Healthcare Insights survey: Patients feel more comfortable with physicians who use an EHR system, and they believe that the information contained in the medical record is more accurate when they physically see the information being entered electronically.
(read more)