He's right about insurance companies actually making everything more expensive. More transparency and streamlining in insurance billing would help, IMO. When hospitals have to have trained coders to ensure insurance is billed properly, they have to pay for those coders somehow. When patients have no idea what they're seeing on their bill or explanation of benefits, there's no way to negotiate for a more reasonable fee.
A true focus on prevention would help. We pay lip service to diet and exercise, but the fact that our obesity rate is so high exposes how little we're really devoted to it.
Education - really, folks, stop visiting the doctor, and especially the ER, for the sniffles. Colds, allergies, the flu, and most viruses that make their rounds of schools and workplaces - these can for the most part be treated at home, with OTC meds, rest, fluids, and TLC.
An increase in the number of urgent cares could be helpful, reducing ER visits for urgent but non-emergent illnesses and injuries.
EMR isn't all it's cracked up to be. The systems are expensive, require a lot of training, sometimes play nicely with counterparts and sometimes don't, and are frequently changed (another high-dollar outlay). From talking with family and friends in health care, they take provider time that could/should be spent on patient care, and are frequently not very user-friendly, even for tech-savvy people. Maybe they need some good coders
There are plenty of ideas on how to address the problems in our system. What are your solutions?
I don't know how I missed this one.
He's right about insurance companies actually making everything more expensive. More transparency and streamlining in insurance billing would help, IMO. When hospitals have to have trained coders to ensure insurance is billed properly, they have to pay for those coders somehow. When patients have no idea what they're seeing on their bill or explanation of benefits, there's no way to negotiate for a more reasonable fee.
A true focus on prevention would help. We pay lip service to diet and exercise, but the fact that our obesity rate is so high exposes how little we're really devoted to it.
Education - really, folks, stop visiting the doctor, and especially the ER, for the sniffles. Colds, allergies, the flu, and most viruses that make their rounds of schools and workplaces - these can for the most part be treated at home, with OTC meds, rest, fluids, and TLC.
An increase in the number of urgent cares could be helpful, reducing ER visits for urgent but non-emergent illnesses and injuries.
EMR isn't all it's cracked up to be. The systems are expensive, require a lot of training, sometimes play nicely with counterparts and sometimes don't, and are frequently changed (another high-dollar outlay). From talking with family and friends in health care, they take provider time that could/should be spent on patient care, and are frequently not very user-friendly, even for tech-savvy people. Maybe they need some good coders