AZRogue
03-21-2010, 12:44 AM
I don't feel like starting my own thread because I don't think the blurb of info I'm posting is worth it, so I'm hijacking this perfectly good, and entertaining, Health Care related thread to interject my little bit of non-news.
After a wonderfully tense and brutal partners meeting with the physicians tonight, where I was asked to show my progress in implementing our new EHR system (I'm doing well, and ahead of schedule, but can't make some of the denser docs in the group understand that this is a different program from whatever app they used in the past so, no, it doesn't work exactly the same way, it just accomplishes the same things. If they wanted the app to function exactly the same way as their previous apps, they shouldn't have ran off half-cocked and bought a NEW one), I'm home.
Not exactly my idea of a great Saturday night. Once a month isn't so bad, I suppose.
Still, the big news of the night wasn't my progress on our new EHR. It was the decision by our physicians to drop, as an enterprise, all Medicare patients. Yep, beginning 90 days from now, no more medicare patients at all. Just enough time to send out flyers to give our patients on Medicare time to find a new health care group. Only our Hospice division will continue seeing them, but under some dispensation/agreement with the other partners. The problem is, of course, that we're the only real game in town so I'm not sure if this means people will have to drive much further to get a large pool of docs to choose from, or if this will create a "Medicare" vacuum and docs will move in to fill it. I can't imagine the latter, given the difficulty in finding PCPs nowadays. Not all the partners were there, though, and supposedly one of them is big on Medicare patients (he's out in Washington fighting against the health care bill), so there might be more that decide to exempt themselves from the decision. If the bill passes, there'll probably be less.
On a more positive note, we're going to be gathering data on three of the more intrusive insurance companies we see a lot of and warning them that we're going to refuse to see patients with their insurance if they don't change their policies regarding getting authorization for certain tests. They're pissing the docs off by making them jump through too many hoops to get what they consider to be necessary testing done and it's impacting quality of care. They're also going to contact some of the employers nearby who have that insurance and let them know the situation, so hopefully they pressure the insurance companies from that side, too.
Don't know how it will work but we're big enough, now. It's the reason why the docs started banding together into their super-group they have now: to have enough clout by being the only game in town so that they could use that as leverage against the insurance companies.
Funny thing is, though we have doctors from all sides, different countries (India, China, Mexico, a Russian dude), religions, and so on, out of the over 130 doctors and PAs with the company, not a one of them is for the health care bill.
Bleh, just a semi-crappy night of boringness, but I thought it was a big deal dropping Medicare patients across the board that way. No one else got worked up about it, so maybe it's just me, but it seemed like a milestone to me so thought I'd share. I haven't gone off on the subject that much because I don't know enough, personally, about it all, though I know very well the opinions of the doctors I work with. I talk about it enough already, I suppose you could say.
It was worth a blurb, so I posted it here, in Anc's Palin/Canadian health care thread.
Double-bleh! Looking at how long this is, I suppose I WILL make my own thread. But, for amusement's sake, I'm going to cut 'n paste it as is, no edits. :) Yes, I'm easily amused.
I need beer!
After a wonderfully tense and brutal partners meeting with the physicians tonight, where I was asked to show my progress in implementing our new EHR system (I'm doing well, and ahead of schedule, but can't make some of the denser docs in the group understand that this is a different program from whatever app they used in the past so, no, it doesn't work exactly the same way, it just accomplishes the same things. If they wanted the app to function exactly the same way as their previous apps, they shouldn't have ran off half-cocked and bought a NEW one), I'm home.
Not exactly my idea of a great Saturday night. Once a month isn't so bad, I suppose.
Still, the big news of the night wasn't my progress on our new EHR. It was the decision by our physicians to drop, as an enterprise, all Medicare patients. Yep, beginning 90 days from now, no more medicare patients at all. Just enough time to send out flyers to give our patients on Medicare time to find a new health care group. Only our Hospice division will continue seeing them, but under some dispensation/agreement with the other partners. The problem is, of course, that we're the only real game in town so I'm not sure if this means people will have to drive much further to get a large pool of docs to choose from, or if this will create a "Medicare" vacuum and docs will move in to fill it. I can't imagine the latter, given the difficulty in finding PCPs nowadays. Not all the partners were there, though, and supposedly one of them is big on Medicare patients (he's out in Washington fighting against the health care bill), so there might be more that decide to exempt themselves from the decision. If the bill passes, there'll probably be less.
On a more positive note, we're going to be gathering data on three of the more intrusive insurance companies we see a lot of and warning them that we're going to refuse to see patients with their insurance if they don't change their policies regarding getting authorization for certain tests. They're pissing the docs off by making them jump through too many hoops to get what they consider to be necessary testing done and it's impacting quality of care. They're also going to contact some of the employers nearby who have that insurance and let them know the situation, so hopefully they pressure the insurance companies from that side, too.
Don't know how it will work but we're big enough, now. It's the reason why the docs started banding together into their super-group they have now: to have enough clout by being the only game in town so that they could use that as leverage against the insurance companies.
Funny thing is, though we have doctors from all sides, different countries (India, China, Mexico, a Russian dude), religions, and so on, out of the over 130 doctors and PAs with the company, not a one of them is for the health care bill.
Bleh, just a semi-crappy night of boringness, but I thought it was a big deal dropping Medicare patients across the board that way. No one else got worked up about it, so maybe it's just me, but it seemed like a milestone to me so thought I'd share. I haven't gone off on the subject that much because I don't know enough, personally, about it all, though I know very well the opinions of the doctors I work with. I talk about it enough already, I suppose you could say.
It was worth a blurb, so I posted it here, in Anc's Palin/Canadian health care thread.
Double-bleh! Looking at how long this is, I suppose I WILL make my own thread. But, for amusement's sake, I'm going to cut 'n paste it as is, no edits. :) Yes, I'm easily amused.
I need beer!