Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 3, 2009 2:34:02 GMT -6
In the past month, I've have had ~30% of my Medicare claims rejected without any reason being given. In order to appeal the rejections, it is necessary to submit the actual progress notes. Thought that sounds simple, it most certainly is not.
Since my notes were handwritten, it necessitates my re-doing the notes by either printing them or typing them out, since Medicare considers illegible notes as "service not provided." Since medical notes are not well transcribed by typing, it means printing most of my previously handwritten notes. This takes 2-3 times as long as it initially took to handwrite the notes.
This means for every 15-minute office visit, I need to spend an additional 20 minutes printing previous notes. This is 20 minutes per each note spent not seeing or treating patients.
This is an extremely poor use of a physician's time, and works directly against providing quality medical care. It's more unnecessary time doing paperwork, that prevents me from taking care of patients, as well as preventing me from pulling out a book and doing some research on an ailment that afflicts one of my patients.
These rejections were done completely at random. Their sole purpose was to save Medicare money, not improve medical care. The goal is to slow doctors down, and reduce their ability to submit new claims to Medicare. It's a cost-cutting measure, at the direct expense of quality medical care.
This is the kind of crap that the Obama administration, and its henchmen (henchpersons) like Katherine Sebelius, want to expand upon. Their philosophy is summed up with the soundbite that "$1.00 worth of fraud prevention saves $1.55 of medical costs." But another way to look at it is that "it diverts $1.00 worth of a doctor's time taking care of patients into $1.55 worth of paper pushing."
If this is the Great One's idea of health care reform, I'm 100% opposed to it.
Since my notes were handwritten, it necessitates my re-doing the notes by either printing them or typing them out, since Medicare considers illegible notes as "service not provided." Since medical notes are not well transcribed by typing, it means printing most of my previously handwritten notes. This takes 2-3 times as long as it initially took to handwrite the notes.
This means for every 15-minute office visit, I need to spend an additional 20 minutes printing previous notes. This is 20 minutes per each note spent not seeing or treating patients.
This is an extremely poor use of a physician's time, and works directly against providing quality medical care. It's more unnecessary time doing paperwork, that prevents me from taking care of patients, as well as preventing me from pulling out a book and doing some research on an ailment that afflicts one of my patients.
These rejections were done completely at random. Their sole purpose was to save Medicare money, not improve medical care. The goal is to slow doctors down, and reduce their ability to submit new claims to Medicare. It's a cost-cutting measure, at the direct expense of quality medical care.
This is the kind of crap that the Obama administration, and its henchmen (henchpersons) like Katherine Sebelius, want to expand upon. Their philosophy is summed up with the soundbite that "$1.00 worth of fraud prevention saves $1.55 of medical costs." But another way to look at it is that "it diverts $1.00 worth of a doctor's time taking care of patients into $1.55 worth of paper pushing."
If this is the Great One's idea of health care reform, I'm 100% opposed to it.