Take An Aspirin And Call Someone Else In The Morning
Doctors who use technology to keep in touch with customers/patients are being penalized by a bizarre payment system. Little wonder that the new Federal health information initiative is drawing more critical scrutiny.
Doctor Kevin’s recent blog entry about some of the medical payment systems arcana based on relative value units, or RVUs, use more than obscure bureaucratic methods to shortchange doctors.
He points out that customer/patient communications by phone or email is not paid by Medicare or insurance carriers, which suggests that having something on an RVU ‘approved’ list is has little utility. Other remote health maintenance or diagnostic capabilities have little presence in this parochial system of approved practices.
Functionally, these RVUs are not determined by a free and open market, but by various government committees, whose members are appointed by other government committees. These committees do have some guild members from the medical community. However, they are mostly from the upper echelons tending to be more administrators and bureaucrats themselves, and whose medical practice was centered on office visits.
This limited worldview is being challenged by a number of other movements that are actively exploiting communications, tracking and presentation technologies. Perhaps one of the more aggressive Larry Brilliant’s works at google.org, described in a recent Forbes article. Another fast growing challenge is medical tourism, which is driving a number of remote health maintenance and tracking initiatives for the simple reason that they are effective and save customers/patients time, hassles and money.
Another group that is taking advantage of this sclerosis is the Minute Clinics, whose appeal to small businesses is growing, with many direct benefits to customer/patients, and who do not have to contend with trade restrictions such as the Federal Stark Amendment.
The medical establishment’s disparagement of remote technology not only discourages innovation and responsiveness, denying customer/patients the abilities to manage their own health matters, and shortchange the doctors, but ultimately will move the bulk of health maintenance offshore.
Anyone who ever wondered by doctor’s offices are so behind the times in the use of technology may not be aware of RVUs and the mind-set that restricts doctors’ activities, but the doctors themselves know that it’s not in their best interest to invest in these, even though doing so could expand their practices and business, and have a direct and positive impact on their customer/patients’ wellbeing.
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Tags: health maintenance, medical economics, medical tourism, minute clinics, relative value units