Healthcare industry frustrated by new government medical codes

Restrictive coding systems have doctors seeking alternatives

By Kenneth Gray

The healthcare industry has been turned upside down by the new healthcare laws. The frustration has translated into physicians taking matters into their own hands.

The idea of direct care is overriding taking insurance, with doctors seeking autonomy from hospitals and opening their own practices. There, they believe they can provide the type of services that will benefit people.

New healthcare laws

In response to the new healthcare laws, Doctors are doing such things as charging a monthly subscription fee in place of taking insurance. The main reasons that physicians are making these moves are such reasons as:

• Making sure they can still offer quality services
• Balancing making enough money with patient time
• Not having to comply with E/M coding

Doctors are feeling more like employees of the government and instead want to run a practice that they feel is ethical. The subscription-based practice will allow people from all walks of life to achieve adequate healthcare. Adequate healthcare for someone currently receiving no healthcare, can be the difference between life and death. Many diseases like cancer, can be greatly affected by early detection.

It will also allow many people to work with the doctor to prevent problems before they happen. This will also allow the doctor not to have deal with reams of paperwork and focus on what he wants to do, which is treat patients.

Direct primary care

Direct primary care will most likely become more prevalent with the new healthcare laws. Many doctors feel like this is becoming a necessity. This model is rapidly growing, resulting in Doctors dealing less with the wasted money and time that goes into haggling with insurance companies.

This model is surprisingly growing in popularity. It seems like a legitimate and refreshing alternative to government making all the decisions when it comes to people’s health and access to doctors. This will allow doctors to be directly involved in the primary care decisions.

Physicians are entrepreneurial

Physicians are becoming more entrepreneurial in response to the new medical codes, and they want to bring back transparent pricing. When the new healthcare laws go into full effect in 2014, even more doctors will most likely make the switch. 

This is an extremely strange and disruptive time for the healthcare field. By adopting a different business model, many doctors believe they can take on less patients, make more money, and provide better care. Limiting the number of patients will likely result in increased level of care because doctors will have more time per customer and will not be as tired.

There will be a shortage of doctors

There will be a shortage of doctors, and this problem will only be exacerbated with the new health care laws. There will be a surge of insured people who will seek out treatment from an already stressed population of doctors. Additionally, patients should expect to see less of doctors and more of nurses. Nurses will start acting more and more as primary physicians with the shortage of doctors.

About the author: Kenneth Gray is the founder of A-fordable Billing Solution a Pasadena, CA medical billing company http://www.afordablebillingsolution.com/ . Follow Kenneth and A-fordable Billing on Twitter.