Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Operating In A Vacuum
Yesterday the New York Times published an editorial co-authored by Newt Gingrich and Patrick Kennedy concerning the problems with the healthcare in this country. I have never read anything so misinformed. I guess this is what you get when you combine someone who thinks he is going to make his fortune as a consultant in the medical field with a liberal democrat. Their claim that 20 percent of medical tests are repeated due to lost results is laughable. I also seriously doubt that 98,000 people die each year in hospitals due to mistakes. And their recommendation to use technology to create electronic heath records accessible in regional networks scares me to death. Big brother, after all, is always looking over your shoulder.
Below is my letter to the editor regarding this wasted opportunity to have a frank discussion about how this country provides fantastic medical care if you can get access to it. I don't have much hope they will print it since its more than double the amount of words they want and it mentions the dreaded term medical savings accounts.
Dear Sir:
While I do agree with the diagnosis by Mr.Gingrich and Mr. Kennedy that our country provides the finest healthcare available anywhere in the world using processes best suited to third world countries, I believe that their recommended treatment may be worse than the disease. After working in the medical field for over 20 years and installing multiple complex information technology systems I can attest to the fact that computers will not fix our ailments. In fact, the safe use of these products is highly dependent on the skills of people who understand how they work, who can keep them running around the clock, who can train our workers, who can test to make sure programs are doing what we think they are doing, who can develop and implement manual procedures when they go down, and who understand how to improve and upgrade these investments in the future. The matter is extremely serious as I have seen patients loose their lives for no other reason except that staff relied on technology to make decisions for them.
The real problem in healthcare delivery is the divorce of the customer (patient) from the provider (physician) in terms of costs. Medical insurance in the U.S. does not operate truly as insurance against the unexpected; it is actually pre-payment for medical care. In such an arrangement patients have all the incentive to use as much as they can get and as a result insurance companies try and control expenditures by imposing restrictions on access (authorizations, referrals, exclusions for pre-existing conditions, etc.). This is why the concept of medical savings accounts is so important. Once individuals pay for their doctor visits themselves they become much more involved in charges and levels of service. After all, would we really need all those fancy expensive billing systems if patients were paying by check?
PermaLink | 5:03 AM |
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Below is my letter to the editor regarding this wasted opportunity to have a frank discussion about how this country provides fantastic medical care if you can get access to it. I don't have much hope they will print it since its more than double the amount of words they want and it mentions the dreaded term medical savings accounts.
Dear Sir:
While I do agree with the diagnosis by Mr.Gingrich and Mr. Kennedy that our country provides the finest healthcare available anywhere in the world using processes best suited to third world countries, I believe that their recommended treatment may be worse than the disease. After working in the medical field for over 20 years and installing multiple complex information technology systems I can attest to the fact that computers will not fix our ailments. In fact, the safe use of these products is highly dependent on the skills of people who understand how they work, who can keep them running around the clock, who can train our workers, who can test to make sure programs are doing what we think they are doing, who can develop and implement manual procedures when they go down, and who understand how to improve and upgrade these investments in the future. The matter is extremely serious as I have seen patients loose their lives for no other reason except that staff relied on technology to make decisions for them.
The real problem in healthcare delivery is the divorce of the customer (patient) from the provider (physician) in terms of costs. Medical insurance in the U.S. does not operate truly as insurance against the unexpected; it is actually pre-payment for medical care. In such an arrangement patients have all the incentive to use as much as they can get and as a result insurance companies try and control expenditures by imposing restrictions on access (authorizations, referrals, exclusions for pre-existing conditions, etc.). This is why the concept of medical savings accounts is so important. Once individuals pay for their doctor visits themselves they become much more involved in charges and levels of service. After all, would we really need all those fancy expensive billing systems if patients were paying by check?
PermaLink | 5:03 AM |
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