Eliminate the Cost of Medical Reporting: $40,000+ Per Physician Per Year

This morning on EMR and HIPAA I found an article entitled "Quality Reporting: A Drain on Practice Resources, New Study Shows" by Steven Marco the President of HIPAAOne.  His article cites a study that appears in the March issue of Health Affairs titled "US Physician Practices Spend More Than $15.4 Billion Annually To Report Quality Measures." 

The study finds a staggering amount of resources, 785 hours per physician and $15.4 billion per year,  are being squandered on reporting:

"Practices reported spending on average 15.1 hours per week per physician on quality measures. Of that 15.1 hours per week, physicians account for 2.6 hours with the rest of the administrative work divided between nurses and medical assistants. About 12 of those 15.1 hours are spent logging data into medical records solely for quality reporting purposes. Additionally, despite a wealth of software tools on the market today, about 80 percent of practices spend more time managing quality measures than they did three years ago and half call it a 'significant burden.'"

This duplicate manual entry, shipping of spreadsheets over email, copying of files around a network, and general wasted effort (my grandfather would have said monkey motion) is not only wasting these resources, but is insecure.  Anything sent over email is sent in clear text, there is no encryption.  Even worse, Any manual system, whether it is typing in duplicate information into the reporting engine, or importing it in from a text file or spreadsheet, is going to have errors.  People just aren't designed to expend the level of attention it takes to do these repetitive tasks.

Mr. Marco, of course, makes the point that the answer is "greater reporting automation in the healthcare industry." 

Well, of course it is.  If you've been reading my posts, you know that only once have we pointed out a problem without providing a solution.  Mr. Marco apparently doesn't have the capability to actually solve the problem.  Without sounding too much like an advertisement, and I've been accused of that before, Sentia Health's EMR/EHR offering includes a reporting engine.  Once again, we've already solved the problems that others are just now noticing.  Mr. Marco states that "practices spend an average of $40,069 per physician" on reporting.  Add that to the $32,000+ per year the average physician spends on EMR/EHR and you are talking about some real money, and you see why the cost of healthcare is skyrocketing.  We won't even bring up the point that our EMR/EHR has a built in reporting engine and is free for the physician to use.  Well, I guess I just did.  Here let me stroke you a check for $72,000 every year to say "I'm sorry."

Our mantra at Sentia Health always has been and always will be to simplify, streamline, combine and automate systems.  To that end, we have developed a system that not only completely eliminates the traditional insurance company, but addresses the problems presented by HealthAffairs.org and Mr. Marco.  It's true that we have only deployed three reports so far, but these reports are done, for once and for all.  If you need a particular report, you click the button and it appears on your screen in under two seconds.  You can then save it as a Word, Excel or PDF document.  You can print it out.  It is available anywhere you have an internet connection.

Pardon me, I think I sprained my shoulder patting myself on the back, but I'm sure you, dear reader, see why.  If you see the Doom-and-Gloom naysayers shouting about problems without presenting real, ready-for-market solutions, pooh-pooh them and point them to us.  We'll show them how things can, should, will be and ARE being done.