Health Insurance Reform From The Bottom Up
One of the top priorities of the Obama administration is reforming our health care system by reducing its cost.
It should take a long look at the costs imposed on the industry by government regulations.
We offer the following example which by itself is minuscule but in total is useless and borderline stupid.
In 2003 I purchased a vision/dental plan from Safeguard, the premium deducted monthly from my checking account. Over the years Safeguard sold the account to Nationwide which in turn sold it to Health Net.
Two months ago I canceled the policy but Safeguard and Nationwide had no record of my account.
Yesterday, Jan. 7, 2009, I received a letter from Safeguard. It informed me federal law requires them to remind me of my privacy rights.
Go figure.
Cross posted on The Remmers Report
6 Responses to “Health Insurance Reform From The Bottom Up”
Why blame Federal regulations for their poor record keeping. Would Uncle Sam be at fault for duplicate billings and charges for medical negligence? Many doctors still relie on paper records and files. Would you put up with banks using ledgers and only paper records?
Rudi, respectfully, I'm under the impression that very large numbers of doctors, the majority in fact, still use paper medical records. We are a small (4-provider) office, but these are some of my thoughts:
Our office does use paper records. They are immediately available, transfer easily from office to office, fax to fax, office to patient. Changes and additions are easy to make in them, legally, and with minimal effort. They don't require a functioning electronic database with the required functioning database manager, or regularly-updated software, or $100,000 startup costs. They don't have to reach a 90% online, uptime goal. They don't utilize pre-fabricated, fill-in-the-bland template notes, and I don't have to spend hours each day facing a computer screen instead of a patient's face. They don't suffer with power outages, lightening strikes, and faulty backup systems.
So far, the EMR has eluded my office and staff as the ultimate solution to our medical problems, as is emphasized by so many administrations, left and right.
I suspect the human element of imperfection is what is responsible for so many “duplications” and errors as discussed in this post, for I imagine the companies that Jerry describes use electronic databases exclusively.
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As the charge of paying this health care reduce there there insurance from the hospitals is reduce also?