Brian and the Gang,
Ya this is what I was sort of getting at. If and when it becomes a real P4P or go to jail, go directly to jail, then perhaps we should have Jon devote a whole lot of time to such a thing. But until then I'm not to into it myself.
Furthermore, as I was talking to Vinny and Bert in a PM a few days ago, there is a very nice, not for profit, charity based S-CHIPS carrier here in NYS, that uses nothing more than claims submitted to track lots of positive for quality things, all without a stitch of input from the providers or an extra chart watching and doctor patient spying. They are a wonderful example of how to have a positive impact on care all without further violating the privacy of the doctor patient relationship or adding any extra work for the already over-worked PCP's office. When you think about it though, it kind of funny because they are paying us and giving us incentives to do basically do exacty what we would have done anyway. It's just good medicine, now we get a thank-you for doing our jobs as we should and do.
P4P is hogwash, BullCCHITT. Henry Ford needs to stop being a greedy fascist pig, starting paying us reasonably well for what we need to and should be doing each and everyday, and he'll get all the quality he needs. Tell me why PCP's rates are the lowest as compared to other specialists that have lots of good paying procedures to off-set their expenses. Why are office visit codes the ones with the lowest relative value units when that is all PCP's do all day, we live and die by these E&M codes. We have little or no, well paying other things to help pay the bills. And yet everyone admits this is where the rubber meets the road, where the real care and care managment is and should be, so why can't PCP's get a 50% bump in all their office visit codes, stop having their other little procedures or extra well care things bundled out of their submitted charges and finally say thank-you for all your hard work. But instead of giving us the bump we need to finally make up for all the cuts, and stagnant fees and finally start paying our bills; but instead its regular pay for all the extra CCHITT and sizable cuts for not doing CCHITT and P4P.
I must be a psychic because I predicted this 4 years ago. It is just another way to take money out of the pockets of hardworking primaries and give it to the large for profit insurance industry or to keep the feds from having to actually pay for the healthcare they insist on giving people. FOOD STAMPS, remember Food Stamps. We as a society want to feed the poor but we still pay the retailer his full free market based prices and we don't treat him like a criminal for wanting to be paid for his goods or services. Instead we as a society pay the real normal price. Sorry for spouting off so, but I'm really sick of all this CCHITT.
Anyway, as Brian said many of these "womderful" extra features will if nothing else really change the look, feel and performance of AC, no less its ease of use and how easy it is to learn and teach. I think Al could probably speak to this best and this was the type of creep I was talking about. Al has tons of data and info on how P4P and CCHITT influenced EMR's just get bloated to hell and become animals to use and maintain. I for one as much as I want AC to stay current and useful, it is the useful part that I want to make sure remains. Isn't that why almost all of us chose to go the AC route in the first place??? Al are you listening? Care to chim in here?
