In continuation of my previous blog article: How many Administrators does it take to run a Hospital ?, the brevity and conclusion of which interested me so much that I went deeper into this subject.
A link from that article drew me to an article by Kevin MD on the subject of health care spending.
In India, as in the USA where health care spending is something worrisome, this should make very interesting reading.
It is no secret that there is no love lost between Administrators and Doctors in most institutions.
Usually the Administration claims that the doctors don’t justify the amount being spent on them by the Hospital in terms of salary and other facilities provided. This data seems to point otherwise.
As the final word on this is yet to be spoken, still every bit of more reading I do on this topic seems to affirm the feeling I always had : That I was right
See the link below for an interesting article on what the author thinks about this.
Claims are backed up with some data from US Presidents advisors…
Administration comprises one of the biggest factors for health care waste.
But does health reform do enough to streamline it? It’s doubtful.
Consider the following chart presented by David Cutler, a President Obama advisor:
In other words, for every one doctor there are 5 more are employed to do administrative tasks.
And, frankly, it’s ridiculous. As Dr. Cutler says, “There is a lot of money spent doing things that in no other industry do we tolerate.”
Health reformers are hopeful that the money spent for electronic health records and claims processing will cut down on the bureaucracy. But it’s doubtful. Because universal standards for health IT are fragmented and difficult to implement, it’s unlikely that digital systems are a viable answer. If anything, I can see electronic records creating more positions, such as IT support, that will further bloat the administrative side of health care.
This is compounded by the impending transition to ICD-10 — with a 10-fold increase in coding complexity.
Read More Here:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/04/health-care-administration-source-medical-waste.html#more-43828
Dr. Easwar T.R 