Increasing Physician Productivity amid Value-Based Reimbursement Model
Originally published by Illumination Curated on Medium
Value-based or merit-based reimbursement is the payment model for medical services that are gradually replacing the conventional fee-for-service standard for payers and healthcare companies. The goal is to expand healthcare expenses by shifting from a model based on quantity to value-based reimbursement founded on quality.
The?Value-Based Reimbursement Affects Physician Productivity . While physician practices need to incorporate value-based reimbursement needs into their productivity strategies, it may be difficult for some to break down the common barrier between healthcare business and care delivery. Therefore, to align patient experience and physician productivity goals with succeeding under value-based reimbursement, physicians and clinicians need hand-holding. However, most of the prevailing EHRs are not designed to offer such a service.
Physician productivity and satisfaction are only achievable when clinicians can easily access the data they want when they need it. Too frequently, physicians are overrun with so much clinical data that they waste significant time digging through the chart to find relevant pieces. That is the lifestyle to which the healthcare community is not a stranger.
Clinicians lack workflows that support the automatic identification and interpretation of the chaotic and complex medical information arrangement from prior encounters, lab reports, inpatient records, and other sources.
Clinicians need a healthcare environment that serves pertinent information saves them time, and focuses on the patient rather than their computers.
Clinician productivity is further enhanced when the computer does not disrupt the ways clinicians think and work. These enhancements are designed to help physicians reach a particular diagnosis precisely and timely at an affordable cost. Clinical decision-making can bring in EHRs that are more useful and accentuate clinical workflows. At the same time, rarely tell a physician what to do to preserve productivity. The current EHR systems hardly enhance clinical workflows and change them instead of replicating clinician practices.
Photo by?ThisisEngineering RAEng ?on?Unsplash
The overall electronic health records may endure accurate reimbursement at the expense of clinicians’ workflow, increasing the burden of data entry. EHRs prerequisite technologies that work towards validating billing, compliance, coding, and quality measurement while ensuring a smooth clinical workflow process.
Traditionally, clinicians have primarily banked on retrospective physical chart reviews to identify possible documentation and coding holes. Upon recognition of system chasms, patients return for a clinical follow-up visit which, at a minimum, is inconvenient for both the patient and the clinician. This trend undermines the utility of modern technology by the medical community.
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Instead of inefficient and error-prone manual methods, clinicians must implement technologies that prompt physicians at the point of care.
Establishing a fair and rational cost-cutting goal that avoids patient care compromise is crucial. Reevaluating suppliers can potentially refine the selection criteria so physicians can get comparable quality supplies from suppliers that charge less. These are also essentials that can be seamlessly factored in with technology without cutting time from patient care.
Proper technology can maximize employees’ task efficiency. It must be able to cut waste, be it through cutting costs through eliminating time wasted through administrative and side tasks, or simply through fiscal over expenditure. Adding tools that enhance clinician productivity through streamlining documentation, coding, and billing processes can help them curb wasteful operational expenses. For example, if clinicians have documentation tools that support the quick and efficient capture of visit information at the point of care, transcription needs can be reduced or eliminated.
Technologies that automate manual processes can further reduce operational expenses and increase efficiency and accuracy. However, let us not step on the slippery slope of one hundred percent reliance on automated processes, hence adopting EHRs that are equipped to automatically capture and interpret billing and coding details from clinical documentation. Then physicians have different (if not additional) responsibilities towards their data. That is making sure their as well as patient data don’t fall into the wrong hands . The data collected and analyzed to automate the process to reduce the need for manual chart reviews serve as a gold mine for the significant data industry. Process automation is an excellent tool, only if used adequately given full transparency from the technical teams.
Complete reliance on technology is an utter mistake in the medical realm, as technological innovations are merely complementary scientific grounds to medicine. Medical practice exploits the science schooled between a physician and one patient. That contrasts to something cultivating a cookie-cutter treatment through which the traditional population health and overreliance on technology would offer. Technology can bring about comfort to human lives and deliver safety and efficiency to our patients. But we will be leading the way to tragic outcomes if the technology cannot be governed or adapted by medical industry professionals’ transparent efforts.
By focusing on the individual needs of doctor-patient interaction, healthcare organizations can substantially improve the usability of EHRs and enhance clinical outcomes.
The whole?essence in support of value-based physician reimbursement ?lies within the idea of reaching some form of fictitious quality indicators or Key Performance Indicators (KPI). The fundamental necessity to meet these criteria is by implementing EHRs that are designed merely for that reason. That is why those technologies at least partially have utter disregard towards the individual perception of quality and values.
Technology cannot replace the human touch. Health is the most precious asset of a human being, unique to everyone, unlike all other commodities and treasures. It is meant to be assumed at birth and once taken, it’s time to leave this world. It is also the nature of human beings to want life to last forever, and unless he is suffering from poor health, the knowledge that he will leave this world is the basis for devastation and sorrow. That is why:
“We can’t implement a performance-based reimbursement system if physicians and the patients don’t have access to all?available options .”
“DELIVERING VALUE-BASED TRANSFORMATION IN PRIMARY CARE ?has been the extravagant emphasis of some authorities overhaul within the healthcare system, ratifying further mandates to compel physicians to exercise artificial drivers of quality and value by assigning a bureaucratically inspired job description to those with broad clinical skillsets.”
“In the day and age in which immoral artificial intelligence is about to conquer the tasks of memorization and precision, there will be even more urgent need for clinicians who are?compassionate, caring, and creative .”