On February 17, 2009, US President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ("ARRA") as a $787 billion “economic stimulus law”. This Act launched new federal mandates on health information technology (HIT) and privacy of personally identifiable information (PII). ARRA encourages healthcare and patient care facilities to adopt a wider use of electronic medical/ health records (EMR/EHR).
The benefits of EMR/EHR are too obvious to list. First and foremost, EMR/EHR technology helps increase productivity by supporting automation of clinical processes from filing paper charts and prescribing medications to storing sensitive patient data, managing accounting information and consulting on treatment options. The second benefit of EMR/EHR consists in revenue increase. Implementation of medical billing software allows healthcare facilities to offer new services to patients, to attract new businesses and reduce workload on the medical staff. In spite of rather high costs of implementation, EMR/EHR technology promises to boost healthcare profits in a long-term perspective by improving patient satisfaction and office image resulting in increased patient referrals and retention. EMR/EHR software comes with many in-built and added-on tools able to help physicians make faster and prompter decisions. Such tools include, but are not limited to: diagnosis and prescribing medications, automated appointment reminders, automated treatment planning etc. EMR/EHR technology is also able to eliminate queues in the physician’s office and missed appointments by allowing patients to arrange an appointment and receive an electronic reminder online.
In overall, EMR/EHR will allow better physician-patient interaction, physician-physician communication, higher quality treatment and protection of sensitive information.
The federalization of encryption and security norms for PII and EMR/EHR promises a new wave of government-funded IT contracts with private contractors, advisors and consultants.
According to Accenture Electronic Health Records Survey (2005), the major barriers to successful and effective EMR/EHR implementation are:
- Capital costs
- Physicians’ resistance to learn new technology
- Lack of technology standards
- Increase of IT staff workloads
It is important to note that the increasing of IT staff workloads is one of the most frequently cited obstacles. As many as 17% of the Survey participants reported the drastic impact of EMR/EHR adoption on IT staff. Considering that the task of implementation is a temporary one augmenting in-house staff with the contract IT specialists would be a better solution than hiring permanent workers.
According to Wipro Health Industry Insights Report (2008), healthcare IT vendor market is fragmented by solution set, geography and segment. The market is dominated by the major hospital information system vendors such as Cerner, Epic, Eclipsys, GE Healthcare, McKesson, Siemens, Meditech etc. In regards to physician adoption of EMR/EHR, the vendor market is both fragmented and opened for new joiners.
Today’s US healthcare organizations are faced with growing pressure to reduce overall labor costs and at the same time to improve the quality of patient care. In order to painlessly and efficiently implement the required technology, organizations need to access the best IT talent pool requiring the latest technology skills coupled with excellent recruiting expertise.
Progressive healthcare organizations are currently resolving the problem of IT talent shortage by choosing to partner with recruiting experts with enormous side experience and outside perspective. The professional vendors can support healthcare services providers with qualified teams of IT experts able to fill in all of the gaps relating to poor technology implementation.
No secret that in the healthcare industry people are the single biggest expense (nearly 60% of the total cost structure). To find, attract and retain qualified professionals to meet the growing IT demand is a real challenge.
Healthcare IT staffing outsourcing can be a valuable option to leverage the organizations’ screening capabilities of narrowing the funnel of prospects to those people who have qualifications, desire and commitment to bring a positive IT change to the company.
Besides leveraging screening capabilities, healthcare IT staffing outsourcing can help companies standardize their recruitment practices, increase turnaround times and reduce vacancy rates down to 2.3 percent and increase overall efficiency by allowing healthcare facilities to focus on their core competencies.
President Obama’s call for total automation of processes in the healthcare is matching a time of limited IT human resources, which puts a serious barrier in the way of successful EMR/EHR adoption. Today’s healthcare administrators are facing a challenge of having to transform and innovate while maintaining and/or reducing the total operating costs to the organization. Healthcare IT staffing outsourcing offers an effective means of increasing IT efficiency while cutting costs.
Sources: Accenture <www.accenture.com>; Wipro <www.wipro.com>
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Having practiced medicine for over 30 years, Congressman Paul gives his perspective on the past and future of medicine in this country, and the effects of government and special interests on quality, costs and access.
Help answer the question
How does universal healthcare in Europe work?
My professor today mentioned that most European countries have universal healthcare. This means that everyones healthcare is provided by the state, correct? How much more money do people pay in taxes in Europe than in the U.S.? It would have to be more since their healthcare is covered, right?
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Tags: care, free, health, medicine, paul, ron, socialized, universal
First, I doubt that healthcare will become universal.
Second, I see no reason why you as a X-ray technician should lose pay…ompare it to salaries in France & other places where they have universal health care.
If you are business saavy you may consider being on the administrative side of healthcare. Physicians are required to bill with special codes called CPT-4 codes that describe services that they provide to patients. There are also codes to describe every diagnosis.
In order for the physicians to obtain payment for services these codes must be submitted in a timely fashion to insurance companies and they must be within the scope of usual practices.
Insurance companies also deny payment to the physicians more often than not and they need people to fight for their money.
Administrators allow physicians to concentrate of helping patients without the nagging concern of redtape and paperwork.
There are also budgeting, managerial and operational issues in healthcare offices or other settings that are handled by these professionals.
You may consider obtaining a masters in heatlh administration. Please refer to http://www.ache.org.
Don't get sick!
An option to consider is traveling overseas for your dental work. I am originally from Los Angeles, but have been living in Monterrey, Mexico for about 2 years now. I have had regular dental visits and am VERY impressed with the quality of the facilities and the doctors. The best part is that dental work is about 50% less expensive here than it is in the U.S! Monterrey, Mexico is just two hours south of Texas, so it is very easy to get to wherever you are. And, you can always combine your visit with a vacation! If this is something that interests you, check out http://www.travelforcare.com a Medical Travel facilitator that will help you with all the details.
I am from Canada where medical coverage is free for everyone,regardless of whether you work or not.
Hospitals carry liability insurance for their nurses. It is unlikely that a nurse will get sued unless she/he does something very deliberate and intentional to harm a patient.
I am English and now live in California. Like most people I thought that there was a huge tax burden in Britain, but after coming here I now think that's not the case.We pay two forms of tax from our wages:Income tax and National insurance. Your income tax is tax like everywhere else, national insurance pays for your pension and healthcare. I have lived in England all my life up till now and I will fiercely defend our healthcare system, the NHS (national health service). In thanks largely to the effort of our heroic doctors and nurses (and all other staff) the NHS survives….the healthcare is nothing like as bad as people make out, and there are no long waiting lists anymore (now if you're waiting more than six months for routine surgery they'll send you abroad to have it done, paid for of course). No-one pays anything for medical care and the one reason it's under stress (As a healthcare proffesional I know this from experience) is the fact that something built as a national health service is used as a world health service. People come to the UK from all over Europe to take advantage of the NHS and from all over the world. I would like to see treatment restricted to citizens/people who have paid at least 5 years national insurance contributions but at the same time I would never ever want to see anyone, citizen or not, turned away or denied medical care because of money. I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford health insurance in the US but the amount hospitals/doctors charge is disgusting and I don't really understand why people are so opposed to universal health care, can you really put a price on life?
By the way income tax is 20% of anything you earn over about 5 and a half thouse pounds ($11k) and national insurance is 11% of anything you earn over 84pounds a week ($160) And people have the option of private healthcare in england too if they want to pay for it
Since the drug companies became privatized, there have been far, far less cures than when it was government controlled. Drug companies only want symptom relievers, since they will be reused over and over, whereas cures are not needed once the problem is gone. No money in cures. Drug companies are more interested in Marketing. Obscene amounts go into marketing. At least thousands if not millions are spent on just pens, clocks, notepads, lunches, clipboards, and a ton of little practically useless stuff they give away for the sole purpose of having the name all around the dr. You should go in a dr's office and just look at the amount of stuff with a drug name on it. That is only a small fraction. The government should really take back the pharmaceutical industry, that would definitely lower regular health insurance prices.
If universal health care is brought in, it doesn't mean you can't get regular health insurance. Considering how very little the health insurances pay out ($0.67 on a $10 charge) I highly doubt that the doctors income would be impacted negatively.
I think universal health care would be a great thing. And this is coming from someone who would probably have to find a new job. You don't see the people who come in who don't have to money to get seen. People who are already sick, dying, and still getting harassed about payments. There are already tons of people who die because they just didn't have the money for a doctor. What is a couple of days wait to that?
6 months is quite far fetched. I was in the military, and the same type of system ran. Health care was FREE and there were no massive wait times.
The only valid complaint that I have heard is that you would not always be able to see the same doctor. Not exactly a big deal.
It could very well be that some doctors could choose to take more regular health insurance patients, and then you could have one of those for your regular doctor.
As atrocious as regular health insurance is, most doctors take most of them. Why? To boost the number of patients. Universal health care could work the same way.
Universal health care will certainly not stop the advancement of medicine. With a little less fear involved, it may even enhance it. Besides, that sounds an awful lot like you want to believe the US is the only place in the world who has helped medicine. Nope.
Would you give up your career to keep universal health care from coming?
That's how strongly I support it.
That would probably be private information. HMO's have fee schedules that list what they allow for certain procedures, but that's probably not available except to providers. They don't "look at information" – they have set schedules, for the most part.
Why would that be important to you in looking for a possible career??
Hi, I’m from Germany, actually it is not so. We have to pay for insurance and more we pay better quality we get.