Study: Insurance matters eat up MDs' time - Memphis Business Journal:

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The findings are part of a new nationalo survey of physician practices conductedby Dr. Lawrence Casalino at . The report founf that overall costs for dealing with insurance plansis $31 billion a year, and 6.9 percent of all U.S. expenditurews for physician andclinical services. The findings come at a time when the Obam administration is looking for ways to contaih healthcare costs. “To get to a health care syste that is high quality and delivers better valuerfor everyone, we have to address the skyrocketing pricde of health care’s administrative costs,” Dr. Risa president and CEO of the , said in a news release.
The studyu also found that nursing staff spent more than 23 weeksaper physician, per year, and clerical staff spent 44 weeks per per year, interacting with health plans. More than thres in four respondents said the costd of interacting with health plans have increased over the pasttwo “While there are benefits to physician interactions with health plans which may, for example, help to reduce unnecessaryy care or the inappropriate use of medicatio n – it would be useful to explore the extent to which these benefits are large enough to justifyu spending three weeks annually of physician time or one-third of the average primary care physician’s compensation on physician practice-healtgh plan interaction,” Casalino said.
The study, publishexd in Thursday’s online issue of Health Affairsd , was co-funded by the and the Robert WoodJohnsoj Foundation’s Changes in Health Care Financing and Organizationn Initiative.