Matt Rammelkamp's Blog

Personal blog of Matthew Rammelkamp from 2005 - 2009. Blog is now changing sites to www.MatthewThomas.tv

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Declaration of Insurance Independence (Part II): Unleash The Health IT Startups

This is Part II of a two-part guest post. The only hope to address the need for innovation in healthcare is to reshape how care is delivered and paid for. Among other things, it's imperative that there's greater efficiency -- an area where technology has demonstrated it can play a role time and again. Interestingly, in the transformative models described earlier, doctors consistently tell me that half to two-thirds of their patient interaction time doesn?t need to be face-to-face (the legacy insurance reimbursement model requires face-to-face appointments for the doctor to get paid). They can deliver high quality medicine without being in the same room as them. By spending less time on insurance bureaucracy, they are able to spend 2 to 8 times more time with patients and still make a reasonable living. These longer appointments aren't simply a luxury. They've demonstrated they can save money and improve outcomes. In the legacy model, a typical 7-minute appointment only allows the doctor enough time to address one symptom with limited time to address the underlying issue.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/LtoKt26UqzU/

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