Saturday, October 27, 2012

Rolling the Deductable Dice

We are being over run by patients who were advised to have an elective procedure who were waiting to see if they were going to meet their deductibles.  (rolling the dice)  Now they are finding out that their deductibles and out of pocket costs are going way up next year so they want everything done between now and the end of the year.  This seems to happen every year, but this year it is magnified by the huge jump in costs.  In our area the deductibles and out of pocket costs are doubling and patients are panicking.  Welcome to Obamacare.

Kwaulity with a K

This EMR stuff is driving me nuts.  Now we have to have all these quality measures that are mandated by the government.  All of these require more work that has nothing to do with why the patient is there.  In addition we have to complete all of these "quality measures" so the patient can have them  in the huge report that we have to generate while they are there.  The sad thing is the one most important quality measure that patients ask for is "that the doctor spend more time with them answering their questions".  So, in order to provide "quality" we have to spend less time with the patient on the reason they are there so we can focus on what they don't really want.