We all know and feel that there is something wrong with the health care system. Since all of us are stuck within the system that has created this health care bubble, not much can be done unless we break out or break some components of this system that is making the bubble hard to burst.
One such component to break is the administrative cost that is escalating no matter what the status of the economy is. Even a simple visit to an immediate care facility costs three times a regular doctor’s visit. Just note this – the care you get is exactly same whether it is immediate or scheduled. However, the illness does not come to you at a scheduled time. Does it? If so, shouldn’t the care process be other way around?
The separation between a doctor and a patient is increasing on a continuous basis. The separation is mainly due to the administrative processes overwhelming the care processes.
If I tell you, back then, I could have walked right into my doctor’s office (who was, surprise-surprise, smoking cigars while talking to the patients) without the first pit stop of profiling your health, second pit stop of paying the details of the credit card, third pit stop of waiting mostly near the chairs outside the secured entry for you to be called, the fourth pit stop of waiting at the nursing station for questions by the nurse, fifth pit stop of waiting for lab tests before the doctor could appear – do you believe? If I needed any emergency care, my doctor would have called for an ambulance immediately and I would have been admitted right into the emergency care. The doctor would have charged a normal visit fee for the services rendered.
How times of changed! That was then. Now it is all about administrative pit stops adding to the cost of actually providing the health care. May be it is that time once again to pair doctor-patient, teacher-student, mentor-mentee quickly enough and easily enough without the administrative processes? May be it is that time once again, immediate care centers operate as immediate care providers? May be it is that time once again to push administrative cost for someone else to assume?
Just to sum-it-up with an example, my daughter’s visit for a quick check-up resulted in waiting time of 40 minutes, a check-up time of 15 minutes and a bill for $360. This of course, without any lab test! It looks like that health care system gobbled up nearly $1500 for an hour of health care. Compare this with the minimum wage that she earns at approximately $9 per hour. Poor thing! She would need to work nearly 40 hours to pay that off!
What if she had an insurance? No win! With the insurance, she still had to pay around $180 amounting to finding an extra 20 hours more to work just because she fell sick. She was told that with student discount, she would have been worse off by another $80. However, she had to pay almost $80 every month towards insurance. If you account for the fact that she fell ill once or twice over the last two years, the price she had to pay for those visits are still no good with insurance.
The most important thing here is that because of these administrative processes, not only the separation between doctor-patient is widening, but also making your insurance premiums to go high to cover not only the care processes, but also the administrative processes. The question that is begging to be asked is: why not remove these administrative processes to discover the real health care costs and to come up with an innovative ways to absorb these administrative processes within an organization or within a insurance company to bring back my days of seeing the doctor and reduce the insurance costs? The circle of learning begs to ask this question: unlearn health care administration to relearn providing one that matters!
Is it too much to ask?