{"id":4413,"date":"2012-06-20T16:30:57","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T20:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.carecloud.com\/?p=4413"},"modified":"2025-11-20T07:52:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T07:52:44","slug":"wait-paper-based-processes-are-wasteful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carecloud.com\/continuum\/wait-paper-based-processes-are-wasteful\/","title":{"rendered":"Wait \u2013 You\u2019re Telling Me Paper-Based Processes Are Wasteful?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Center for American Progress recently released a lengthy, landmark study that made waves in the health IT news sphere. As Modern Healthcare<\/a> (and many others) reported, the research showed\u2026<\/p>\n

Health insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and other providers could trim $149 billion to $160 billion a year from the country’s healthcare bill by implementing administrative reforms such as electronic processing.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

$160 billion is definitely an eye-catching number; it\u2019s the study\u2019s largest \u2018macro\u2019 estimate of the industry\u2019s potential for reform-related administrative spending cuts.<\/p>\n

The authors of the report, \u201cPaper Cuts: Reducing Health Care Administrative Costs<\/a>,\u201d additionally detail how, if stakeholders follow an outlined \u201cthree-part strategy for addressing administrative costs,\u201d they can attain a more conservative estimate of savings of<\/strong> $40 billion per year<\/strong> \u2013 a goal that the U.S. healthcare system should be aiming for.<\/p>\n

The comprehensiveness of the Paper Cuts report is immensely impressive, and I wholeheartedly endorse the strategies it espouses. It\u2019s great stuff \u2013 really. In fact, many of its recommendations including the removal of personal identifiers<\/a> during certain administrative processes \u2014 highlight how simple digital improvements can create meaningful efficiency.<\/p>\n

But when I read Modern Healthcare\u2019s redux of the research, my response was not the \u2018wowed\u2019 reader reaction the news outlet might have expected to elicit.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not awed by the big numbers in the research results. I\u2019m incredulous that getting people\u2019s attention and convincing them that technology-based processes and systems are cost-effective for healthcare requires the publishing and publicizing of a 48-page report<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Most Americans know and understand that healthcare in the U.S. is a hugely wasteful, inefficient industry. By now, it should be clear that healthcare\u2019s dependence on outdated paper-based processes and outmoded technology systems factors hugely into the massively expensive healthcare system that continues to proliferate in this country.<\/p>\n

What other sector spends $360 billion on administration alone<\/a>? What other industry still conducts business with a massive reliance on fax machines and snail mail? Healthcare\u2019s wastefulness is unmatched.<\/p>\n

Yet it still takes nearly 50 pages of hard numbers and analysis \u2013 of two-year old data, no less \u2013 to show the industry\u2019s decision-makers that doing things through electronic means is more efficient, cost-effective, and economical<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s great that the \u201cPaper Cuts\u201d numbers are grabbing people\u2019s attention and making Americans more aware that the widespread use of electronic processes and modern technology could greatly lower healthcare costs.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s disappointing to know that it takes a bold-faced report to make people realize that. An electronic healthcare future will be a less expensive healthcare future<\/strong>, and it\u2019s well past time that the industry embraces the capabilities of modern administrative technology to get us there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Center for American Progress recently released a lengthy, landmark study that made waves in the health IT news sphere. As Modern Healthcare (and many others) reported, the research showed\u2026 Health insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and other providers could trim $149 billion to $160 billion a year from the country’s healthcare bill by implementing administrative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32786,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growth"],"yoast_head":"\nWait \u2013 You\u2019re Telling Me Paper-Based Processes Are Wasteful<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"CareCloud responds to a study that found that administrative reforms such as electronic processing would lower healthcare costs.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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