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Tag: David E. Williams

Joint Commission Says Texting Orders Is a No-No, but Maybe Docs Are on to Something

The Joint Commission has issued a statement indicating that health care professionals should not text patient orders. It reads:

“It is not acceptable for physicians or licensed independent practitioners to text orders for patients to the hospital or other healthcare setting. This method provides no ability to verify the identity of the person sending the text and there is no way to keep the original message as validation of what is entered into the medical record.”

I was alerted to this statement by an iHealthBeat article on the topic, which quotes a couple of experts who note that texting has security, privacy and reliability problems that make it unsuitable for critical issues.

I understand the downsides but I’d be interested to learn more about what’s driving the use of texting for orders — if there is in fact such a trend. My guess is that younger physicians in particular are used to texting in their personal lives, finding it convenient, immediate, reliable, concise and likely to be read, acknowledged and acted on quickly. Add to that the fact that texting can easily be done from personal mobile devices and the appeal becomes pretty clear.

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More Explanation of the Explanation of Benefits (EOB)

A few weeks ago I parsed an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) I received from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts after a visit to Sports & Physical Therapy Associates, an excellent physical therapy center with 14 locations in Greater Boston. The post (What does an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) actually explain?) generated a number of comments and questions on the Health Business Blog itself and when it was cross-posted at KevinMD. In particular:

  • What would a cash paying patient be asked to pay?
  • How is the $225 in “charges” derived? Is it determined by Medicare?
  • Does the provider lose money on the Blue Cross contracted rate?

I’m not a billing expert so I sent an email to Sports & PT to ask them to respond directly. I was impressed with their informative and thorough response, which I am posting here with their permission.

Mr. Williams,

We would be happy to provide you with some insight into how insurance claims are processed.  Please find your questions with the corresponding answers below.

When a patient first comes to our clinics, we provide them our Policy Disclosure document.  I think you will find it valuable in understanding the relationship between patient and provider, patient and insurance carrier, and lastly, provider and insurance carrier.  Here is the first paragraph:

“Sports and Physical Therapy Associates (SPTA) is pleased to participate in your health care and we look forward to establishing a lasting relationship as your physical therapy provider. As part of this relationship, we wish to establish our expectations of your financial responsibility as outlined in our Financial Policy. Letting you know in advance of our Financial Policy allows for a good flow of communication and enables us to better satisfy you. Your medical insurance is a contract between you and your insurance company; we are not a party to that contract. We can often help with providing information about your benefits, but you are primarily responsible for knowing what type of coverage you have and for any charges that you have incurred as a patient with us. Please review and sign the following Financial Policy prior to your first visit.”

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A more palatable path to rationing

Rationing is a very dirty word in America, evoking grim images of wartime Great Britain and –in the health care context– withholding of needed care from patients based on cost. But cut back on costs we must, and with magical thinking about the deficit becoming every more popular, we’ll have to find other ways to convince folks to do it.

Patient safety is a promising guise under which to achieve cutbacks, especially in costly areas where the dangers are real. The new radiation protection bill signed into law in California yesterday is a great example. From AuntMinnie (Calif. governor signs medical radiation bill into law):

The bill requires that radiation dose be recorded on the scanned image and in a patient’s health records, and that radiation overdoses be reported to patients, treating physicians, and the state Department of Public Health (DPH).

The law is clearly focused on overdoses, but once patients realize how much radiation they’re being exposed to –especially by repeated CT scans– many will start cutting back on what they request or accept. Over time, perhaps this attitude will spread to other areas of medicine such as surgical procedures and prescription drugs, where the risks are not always recognized today.

The federal government has done a great job whipping people into a sustained frenzy about airport security. All the time I hear people say they’ll put up with whatever hassles it takes at the airport in the name of security, and it almost seems the greater the hassle, the more satisfied people are to be subjected to it. I don’t admire this approach in airport security, but if the same zeal were devoted to patient safety (with the idea of reducing health care costs) I think it could succeed.

David E. Williams is co-founder of MedPharma Partners LLC, strategy consultant in technology enabled health care services, pharma,  biotech, and medical devices. Formerly with BCG and LEK. He blogs regularly at Health Business Blog, where this post first appeared.

MinuteClinic’s hour may be at hand

Mark Perry draws an interesting inference from two news stories: a WSJ article that suggests consumers are using less health care and another that reports a big jump in MinuteClinic volumes.

Consumers aren’t necessarily consuming less health care like the WSJ suggests; rather, they are shifting their  demand for health care away from expensive, conventional physician offices with limited hours to affordable and convenient retail clinics.  Especially when consumers are spending their own out-of-pocket money for health care and they have a choice, they prefer market-driven, consumer-driven options like affordable, convenient retail clinics over conventional physician offices.

I think Perry is on to something. It’s hard to get people out of their established habits. They have a relationship with their own doctor, they accept the long wait for appointments and even treat it as a proxy for high quality (if my doc is so busy he must be great), and just suck it up when it comes to co-pay’s and deductibles. They want access to high tech exams and the latest drugs.

But all these things change over time. MinuteClinic and its ilk are well-positioned to take advantage of these trends in the long run. To take them in turn:

  • Relationships aren’t what they once were. Your doctor may or may not remember you. If you have something routine (or even if not) you may be shunted off to see a “physician extender, ” such as a nurse practitioner. At least when you go to MinuteClinic that’s who you expect to see
  • Wait times for appointment can be lengthy. Under health reform they are likely to get worse, especially since open access scheduling is slow to catch on
  • We’ve now reached the breaking point for co-pay’s and deductibles. Even insured people are nervous about going in for treatment and want to save money. They realize it’s only going to get worse
  • High tech exams (like MRIs) and drugs have lost some of their allure. Cost is part of it, but the continued news stories of safety problems with drugs are taking a toll, too. I think Americans are finally realizing that when it comes to health care less is often moreContinue reading…

Welcoming immigrants and robots to fill the nursing shortage

David E Williams

In a report this week, Nursing crisis looms as baby boomers age, CNN Money repeats a well-known story:   there are unlikely to be enough nurses to take care of people as they age. Nursing schools can’t keep up with the demand and trouble awaits. We’ll face a shortage of 260,000 RNs by 2025, we’re told.

I don’t really believe it’s such a big deal.

There are two good solutions to the problem, and they aren’t mutually exclusive:

  1. Increase the recruitment of nurses from abroad
  2. Substitute technology for laborContinue reading…

A me-too strategy for me-too drugs

AstraZeneca appears set to follow Merck into the market for “bio-similars.” (See AstraZeneca may join generic rush.)
Congress and the media tend to portray biosimilars are analogous to
generic chemistry-based pharmaceuticals, and therefore believe that
they will lead to much lower prices as a result of the commoditization
of these products. If all goes according to plan, that should cut the
price of biologics by 50 to 95 percent as has been the case for generic
versions of traditional pharmaceuticals.

Pharma and biotech companies aren’t seeing it this way and neither
am I. Although they won’t say so, pharma companies are starting to
realize that biosimilars –which unlike traditional generics cannot be
subsituted by a pharmacist for a branded product– are really like
me-too products within a class of drugs. That’s exactly the model
that’s enabled multiple blockbusters within a given class in the
mainstream pharma business, and led to higher spending overall.
Biosimilars are unlikely to be a lot cheaper than the products they
copy, and they will have all the sales and marketing costs associated
with a branded product, plus some of the development costs. Don’t be
surprised if some biosimilars are actually priced higher than
the original products, based on some real or perceived improvement in
efficacy or safety. That’s what happened when me-too drugs like Lipitor
entered the statin market. (See Generic biologics — or Me Too Drugs 2.0? for more details.)

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