Insurance Administrative Chores eat up physicians' time

Even with electronic records, there’s still a big amount of time spent in this area, and granted those with technology will benefit to a degree, but for the paper folks it’s endless. A big part of the problem is that the rules change so frequently, so if they information has not been updated on the website, or if it is a “judgment” type of decision, well those get pulled out of the mainstream and into another stack to be handled manually.

You also have the usual denial of procedures or claims that behind the scenes, doctors and their offices are working to help the patient too. You may not see this side of it, but it is there with phone calls, maneuvering though many layers of administration to get one simple decision changed or overturned. Last statistic showed that doctors only get to spend around 18% of their time on patient care. You can’t blame the doctors for this side of the problem, the insurers made the rules and algorithms and they have to live and work within them, the same can be said for us too, the patient as many times it’s a joint effort with both the patient and physician involvement. BD

The next time you’re sitting in a doctor’s office, wondering when you will be seen, consider this: He or she spends, on average, the equivalent of three work weeks a year on administrative tasks related to insurance such as claims, billing and prior authorization.

The findings are part of a new national survey of physician practices conducted by Dr. Lawrence Casalino at Weill Cornell Medical College.

The report found that overall costs for dealing with insurance plans is $31 billion a year, and 6.9 percent of all U.S. expenditures for physician and clinical services.

The findings come at a time when the Obama administration is looking for ways to contain health care costs.

“To get to a health care system that is high quality and delivers better value for everyone, we have to address the skyrocketing price of health care’s administrative costs,” said Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The study also found that nursing staff spent more than 23 weeks per physician, per year and clerical staff spent 44 weeks per physician, per year interacting with health plans.

Study: Insurance matters eat up physicians' time - Austin Business Journal: