Patient encounter expenses
by: swissglobal 11/18/00 6:20 am
Msg: 50846 of 50864
Excerpt from Sector Analysis by Sean Wieland
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If a referral is necessary, a fax must be received from the referring physician. At the same time, the physician's staff gathers co-pay and deductible information. Once the patient finally sees the doctor, another flood of transactions is released. Prescriptions are written, notes are transcribed, ancillary information is gathered, lab orders are placed and results viewed, and a claim is sent to the primary payor. And if the patient is referred to a specialist, the whole process begins again.
On average, a physician incurs $38 in expenses per patient encounter, and a payor incurs $19 per encounter. With over one billion patient/physician encounters per year, these inefficiencies add up to more than $63 billion.Connectivity solutions provide a platform for efficient communication, reducing costs. E-health connectivity companies enable physician practices to use the Internet to leverage the information stored in the practices' legacy applications.
Combining legacy healthcare information systems (HCIS) with the speed and efficiency of the Internet is, we think, critical to the success of connectivity companies.
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