The government is remarkably good at kicking cans down the road.
This is the single reason is why government-run health care costs so much.
For instance, we continue to kick the can down the road for the doctor pay fix. Time and time again, we see the Sustained Growth Rate formula fail to be overturned, and instead, Congress vote a few-month reprieve to pay cuts for doctors until they can find another way to either pay those who do the work, or cloak these pay cuts in another, less visible and acutely painful way. Look, we all know it’s coming: paying a few paultry percent more for primary care while slashing specialists payments 40% was lost on no one.
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Westby G. Fisher, MD Website Westby G. Fisher, MD, FACC is a board certified internist, cardiologist, and cardiac electrophysiologist (doctor specializing in heart rhythm disorders) practicing at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, IL, USA and is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine. He entered the blog-o-sphere in […]
And now their kicking the ridiculously complex and overly obsessive medical coding scheme called ICD-10 down the road. Recently we hear the purveyors of this money making scheme, the AMA along with their co-dependents at the Health and Human Services claim they will:
“announce a new compliance date moving forward,” the agency says.
“We have heard from many in the provider community who have concerns about the administrative burdens they face in the years ahead,” HHS says.
As if they really care. Better yet, it’s as if doctors were on really okay with this coding scheme, but just a little “administratively burdened.”
Baloney.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Let me clear: doctors are NOT okay with ICD-10. We never have been. Nor will we ever be. It provides NO value to the patient experience. And let me be even clearer: the REAL reason this can is being kicked down the road is because there are not enough programmers in the world capable of debugging and writing the mounds of computer code accross the scores of information systems out there in the time allotted, nor personnel capable of training all the medical coders and the various permutations of “medical providers” out there on how to use this system.
The delay in implementation of ICD-10 and the inherent costs associated with its implementation and delay of implementation has NOTHING to do with doctors.
Yet this coding scheme and bureaucratic delays of things like the doctor pay fix and the implementation of ICD-10 has EVERYTHING to do with how expensive our health care system has become and how expensive government health care is in general. But you will never see the huge costs of all these delays and hand-wringing accounted for in a non-partisan budget office.
Yep, the reality of these inefficiencies within government-run processes are the poster children for why our entire US health care system is so expensive.
Westby G. Fisher, MD, FACC is a board certified internist, cardiologist, and cardiac electrophysiologist (doctor specializing in heart rhythm disorders) practicing at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, IL, USA and is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine. He entered the blog-o-sphere in November, 2005. He writes regularly at Dr. Wes. DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly the those of the author(s) and should not be construed as the opinion(s) or policy(ies) of NorthShore University HealthSystem, nor recommendations for your care or anyone else's. Please seek professional guidance instead.
