Medicare paid about $729 million in improper payments as part of a program to reimburse doctors for investing in electronic health records (EHRs), according to a government audit.
During a three-year period starting in 2011, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) paid out more than $6 billion as part of a program to incentivize hospitals and physician practices to adopt electronic medical records, but many of the payments audited did not have sufficient justification.
CMS conducted “minimal documentation reviews” on doctors claiming payments as part of the program, “leaving the EHR program vulnerable to abuse and misuse of Federal funds,” the Office of the Inspector General wrote in its report.
To be eligible for EHR incentive payments, doctors must prove they are making “meaningful use” of electronic records systems, which means taking advantage of dozens of features designed to make health care more efficient.
Typical government intervention. Leave well enough alone. Now that they have to use the laptops and record all of the diagnoses and office visits and conversations with the patients,
the doctors or PA don’t even look at you. They have their heads buried in the laptops. I sometimes wonder if they are listening to you and your complaint of symptoms or playing solitaire!
Guess who has access to those
“electronic” records…
Remember when Revrum Wright’s “God-Damn America”-hating, Treasury-looting, economy-wrecking, healthcare-destroying, backstabbing, stone-walling, wildly spending, dope-smoking, momjeans-wearing, shame gland missing, Peace Prize-Stealing, monument-Barrycading, process-circumventing, Benghazi bullshitting, Constitution-stomping, stair-prancing, sheet-grabbing, pillow-biting, ankle-grabbing, Gay-obsessed, stumbling, mumbling, Radical, Bomb-Throwing, Marxist Muzlim Mallard, disguised as a Black man, told the nation that Obamacare was so good that the savings alone would reduce the federal deficit, Medicare spending and offset the fraud? Like everything else this monumental Piece Of Shit ever said the exact opposite was true!
@RADIOATIONMAN/HAM/CB/AM/FM/SSB
Now i can has access to your records! Thank you very much.
“We only want to help you.”
I’m from the FBI and I have come to investigate that purple pimple on your left butt check as was noted in your private, personal medical records!
Sure wish Russian hackers would publish Killary’s medical records. That would possibly halt her 2020 plans and shut her up (away?) forever!
OldGal46 – I’m pretty certain that the Clinton era is over now and by 2020 she’ll either be looking up at the grass or totally out of it looking at each ear with the opposite eye. Besides, those old FBI files she swiped are pretty stale buy now anyway!
by
I am a doctor and can assure you that EMR’s are one of the worst ideas ever to come to medicine, and remember, medicine thought leeches were great at one time (still useful but not in the same manner). If I have an EMR on a patient, I just ask the patient what has happened and get a better idea than the computer record, even if the patient is comatose. My system before was to carry a Dictaphone and record everything, you then had a very precise record of what was going on. But that did not record if you had a gun, hated your wife, drove without a seat belt, and other junk.
Oh, I forgot, on payments, Medicare will not accept a paper bill now. Used to I had what was called a peg system. 100% paper and much more accurate than the computer.
Waste, my ass … “redistribution” of wealth.
From those who work to those who are politically connected.
It’s an old story … “full of sound and fury, signifying NOTHING.”
We allow it. We vote for it. We relish it.
izlamo delenda est …
Any information “in the cloud” will be abused by someone at sometime.
It was all a ruse to make $$$ for the tech industry. Big time redistribution of wealth.
Who wants a doc that only looks at a computer screen during a visit? Here’s a pearl…most of these EHRs do not integrate with others (great example the VA).
Can I just say that when the cloud goes down (as in when the internet was jacked a few months ago), no one gets anything done. You better hope you aren’t in the ER at that moment.
Actually, the computer in medicine ploy is an effort to get rid of the private doctor and make every doctor under a managed care group. The reason is security. A private doctor can not afford the tech security that is necessary via Fed guidelines, thus he has to go to a large group, managed by non doctors.