Medicare Bills Rise As Records Turn Electronic

When the federal government began providing billions of dollars in incentives to push hospitals and physicians to use electronic medical and billing records, the goal was not only to improve efficiency and patient safety, but also to reduce health care costs.

But, in reality, the move to electronic health records may be contributing to billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private insurers and patients by making it easier for hospitals and physicians to bill more for their services, whether or not they provide additional care.

Hospitals received $1 billion more in Medicare reimbursements in 2010 than they did five years earlier, at least in part by changing the billing codes they assign to patients in emergency rooms, according to a New York Times analysis of Medicare data from the American Hospital Directory. Regulators say physicians have changed the way they bill for office visits similarly, increasing their payments by billions of dollars as well.

For instance, the portion of patients that the emergency department at Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare in Utica, N.Y., claimed required the highest levels of treatment — and thus higher reimbursements — rose 43 percent in 2009. That was the same year the hospital began using electronic health records.

The share of highest-paying claims at Baptist Hospital in Nashville climbed 82 percent in 2010, the year after it began using a software system for its emergency room records.

Over all, hospitals that received government incentives to adopt electronic records showed a 47 percent rise in Medicare payments at higher levels from 2006 to 2010, the latest year for which data are available, compared with a 32 percent rise in hospitals that have not received any government incentives, according to the analysis by The Times.

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The Prof said:

nyt today:



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/b...ses-at-hospitals-with-electronic-records.html

unintended consequences, anyone?

the ig for hhs finds the facilitated use of billing codes leaves the system "vulnerable to fraud and abuse"

making medical records more electronic "allows doctors to cut and paste the same examination finding for multiple patients, a practice called cloning"

as connected as "doping and bicycling," the practice is widespread and everyone knows

according to nyt, citing the ig

poor president punt, everything he touches turns on him

just how much failure can you countenance?

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this same crap been going on for decades

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trying to pin it on obama is laughable

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The Prof said:

nyt today:



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/b...ses-at-hospitals-with-electronic-records.html

unintended consequences, anyone?

the ig for hhs finds the facilitated use of billing codes leaves the system "vulnerable to fraud and abuse"

making medical records more electronic "allows doctors to cut and paste the same examination finding for multiple patients, a practice called cloning"

as connected as "doping and bicycling," the practice is widespread and everyone knows

according to nyt, citing the ig

poor president punt, everything he touches turns on him

just how much failure can you countenance?

Click to expand...

PeteEU said:

Medicare/aid bill will go up regardless.. price setting is done in the private sector and there there are no controls or competition what so ever, so the private sector is sucking out as much profit as they want from the American people. If you want to complain about raising Medicare and aid... focus on the private sector.

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