Healthcare Update Satellite — 10-09-2013

Government getting pissed because providers are beating it at its own game? When feds started pushing electronic medical records and threatening to penalize patient, a funny thing happened … the amount of money the feds spent on healthcare increased by billions of dollars. Now Kathleen Sebelius and Eric “Fast N Furious” Holder are warning that doctors that copying and pasting patient data between patient medical record entries should not occur because it risks medical errors and overpayments. They promise to “prosecute health care fraud” and will “consider future payment reductions as warranted.” In other words, if you type or write the same thing over and over again, you’re fine, but if you cut and paste you are a prima facie criminal. When people with no clue about the inner workings of the health care system attempt to create laws regulating the system, increased costs will result. Medicare recently implemented a rule requiring that full hospital admissions must be reasonably expected to require a “two midnight” stay in the hospital, requiring physicians to certify the medical necessity of such care, and imposing more costs on patients if they do not stay two midnights. Do they really think that there will be less admits? All that is going to happen (and that is already happening) is more thorough documentation of a patient’s condition and comorbidities – which will increase billing levels further and will increase costs. Oh, and look for an...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Tags: Healthcare Update Source Type: blogs