Imagine spending most of your life preparing to be a doctor. You get straight As in high school and college. You are accepted to medical school and four years later you graduate with a Doctor of Medicine degree. Your training is not over, however. Medical school graduates must go through a residency training program, which is a requirement to practice medicine in all 50 states. Not all medical graduates will be accepted into residency. In other words, the National Resident Matching Program (Match) is a game of musical chairs, where the losers lose not only their seat but often their career.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Thursday Links
- Congressional health program suffers “significant data breach” affecting “hundreds” of lawmakers, staff.
- Bill Frist: the benefit from implementing value-based payment models has been modest, and so far has not resulted in significant savings to payers, providers, or patients. No surprise: they were all designed by the buyers of care – something that happens in no other market.
- “We are now 11 years into the largest epidemic of adolescent mental illness ever recorded.”
- Site neutral payments (independent of hospital, clinic, doctor’s office, etc.) would save Medicare $158 billion over ten years.
- About half of the governmental public health workforce left their jobs between 2017 and 2021.
CMS to Make Prior Authorization Quicker, Easier
Prior authorization is a requirement that health insurers use to exercise more control over enrollees’ medical treatments. If a health plan requires prior authorization for a specific service and providers fail to obtain approval, the treatment is not reimbursed. Prior authorization is controversial because doctors and patients often see it as an unnecessary interference between the doctor and patient relationship. Doctors hate the hassle of seeking permission prior to treating their patients. They also dislike so-called bean counters second guessing their treatment choices.