MEDICAL BILLS SKYROCKET AFTER GOVERNMENT DEMAND TO BILL ELECTRONICALLY BACKFIRES ON PATIENTS
CAN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION GET ANYTHING RIGHT?
When the federal government began providing billions of dollars in incentives to push hospitals and physicians to use electronic medical and billing records, the goal was not only to improve efficiency and patient safety, but also to reduce health care costs. In reality, the move to electronic health records are contributing to billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private insurers and patients by making it easier for hospitals and physicians to bill more for their services, whether or not they provide additional care.
- Hospitals received $1 billion more in Medicare reimbursements for emergency room treatment alone , than they did in any of the previous five years , by electronically changing the billing codes they assign to patients according to a New York Times analysis of Medicare data from the American Hospital Directors -
Regulators say physicians have changed the way they bill for office visits similarly, increasing their payments by billions of dollars as well. The most aggressive billing by just 1,700 of the more than 440,000 doctors in the country cost Medicare as much as $100 million in 2010 alone, federal regulators said in a recent report, noting that the largest share of those doctors specialized in family practice, internal medicine and emergency care. For instance, the portion of patients that the emergency department at Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare in Utica, N.Y., claimed required the highest levels of treatment and thus higher reimbursements rose 43 percent in 2009. That was the same year the hospital began using electronic health records. The share of highest-paying claims at Baptist Hospital in Nashville climbed 82 percent in 2010, the year after it began using a software system for its emergency room records. Over all, hospitals that received government incentives to adopt electronic records showed a 47 percent rise in Medicare payments at higher levels from 2006 to 2010, the latest year for which data are available, compared with a 32 percent rise in hospitals that have not received any government incentives, according to the analysis by The New YorkTimes.
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CAN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION GET ANYTHING RIGHT?
When the federal government began providing billions of dollars in incentives to push hospitals and physicians to use electronic medical and billing records, the goal was not only to improve efficiency and patient safety, but also to reduce health care costs. In reality, the move to electronic health records are contributing to billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private insurers and patients by making it easier for hospitals and physicians to bill more for their services, whether or not they provide additional care.
- Hospitals received $1 billion more in Medicare reimbursements for emergency room treatment alone , than they did in any of the previous five years , by electronically changing the billing codes they assign to patients according to a New York Times analysis of Medicare data from the American Hospital Directors -
Regulators say physicians have changed the way they bill for office visits similarly, increasing their payments by billions of dollars as well. The most aggressive billing by just 1,700 of the more than 440,000 doctors in the country cost Medicare as much as $100 million in 2010 alone, federal regulators said in a recent report, noting that the largest share of those doctors specialized in family practice, internal medicine and emergency care. For instance, the portion of patients that the emergency department at Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare in Utica, N.Y., claimed required the highest levels of treatment and thus higher reimbursements rose 43 percent in 2009. That was the same year the hospital began using electronic health records. The share of highest-paying claims at Baptist Hospital in Nashville climbed 82 percent in 2010, the year after it began using a software system for its emergency room records. Over all, hospitals that received government incentives to adopt electronic records showed a 47 percent rise in Medicare payments at higher levels from 2006 to 2010, the latest year for which data are available, compared with a 32 percent rise in hospitals that have not received any government incentives, according to the analysis by The New YorkTimes.
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE
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