Docs Tired of Paper Work? I Have a Solution
Today in one of my favorite blogs, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, Jacob Goldstein comments on the fact that doctors, drowning in paperwork, have less and less time to heal.
The solution, of course, which health economists, health policy analysts, and bioethicists have been clamoring for for years, is to have a centralized healthcare billing system. As NEJM reminds us the administrative costs for ALL of the Canadian healthcare system is 16.7% of the total healthcare budget while in the good-old US of A we spend something on the order of double that. And JUST overhead spending the US spends 10 times as much as Canada.
So, you don't like Canada or think they are anomaly in comparative health examples. Fine. The point still stands. Would you rather have your doctor spend more time filling out forms for your insurance company and every other person under the sun or spending that time with you in the exam room? Would you rather spend less time filling out forms and more time reading People Magazine in the waiting room?
We know administrative costs must be cut. But no one, neither presidential candidate even, knows how. But perhaps if medical schools taught doctors how to run a business and manage well the idea of "pushing paper" wouldn't seem so onerous. Or be done so poorly. Then they could get back to the important stuff. Doctoring.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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You had me until this. The first part of the post suggests that the solution is to cut out the bureaucracy by having a single-payer system. That seems like a solution to the problem of wasted physician energy & cognitive resources.
But this last suggestion (that medical schools should teach management) is less helpful. Teaching doctors to manage in medical school takes time away from teaching them to doctor. And it suggests that doctors, after graduating, should spend time managing better...which takes time away from doctoring.
The two ideas are not exclusive, of course, and I don't think the last suggestion is wrong...doctors with working knowledge of business & management can only help. But I would hate to have this be preferred over the earlier idea, which would eliminate the need for so much management!
- by Thomas Cochrane on Nov 7, 2008 at 9:24 AM | link