Who knew the cost of medical billing was such a significant factor of the high cost of health care?
A new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association spells out in dollars and cents just how much it costs to manage bills for health care. The Los Angeles Times reports that, according to the analysis, the cost of collecting payments for just one primary-care physician at a large academic medical center runs more than $99,000 a year.
Are you shocked yet? The study's researchers, from Duke University and Harvard Business School, reconstructed the whole life cycle of a medical bill to calculate exactly how much the process of billing costs. Beginning with the making of an appointment by a patient and ending when the health system banks the payment for treatment, researchers subjected five types of what they termed "patient encounters" to analysis.
Continue Reading for Free
Register and gain access to:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
