Health Care Innovation Forum: Banks, Doctors, and Apps

The internet and its side kicks, apps and blogs, are a new way  to test  ideas in the public forum.

Anonymous

Quick. 

What are the two most heavily regulated U.S. industries? What innovations do they share in common?  And what is the purpose of these innovations?

The two industries are banking and doctoring, and they are beginning to share these features:

·         Automated  customer entry

·         Online customer  communication

·         Standardized nationwide  interoperable communication systems

·         Red tape breakers

With banks these features are well established. They include :  ATMs (Automated Teller Machines),  online banking,  a national system where banks can communicate with one another,  and various apps that allow banks to instantly speed and record  transactions.

With doctors,  these systems are just evolving  but they are going the way of the banks.     They include : APC (Automated Physician Credentialing),  EHRs (Electronic Health Records), HIT (Health Information Technologie, nationally linking  EHRs), and health care apps that cut through the red tape.

The rise of the apps industry, widespread use of smart phones,  and increasingly savvy IT  consumers and industry players make these things possible.  Another factor is growth of health savings accounts,  which banks will manage and doctors will steer through the banks.

Red Tape

A quick word, if I may,  about  the red tape of physician credentialing.   Every major health care industry player – medical societies,   hospitals,  physician groups, health insurance companies , and government (CMS) – deals with credentialing.   Each deals with credentialing  in a different way  with different levels of efficiency.   Each communicates with one other at some time or another. 

The result is a  massive , snarled ball of red tape. I define red tape as excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal, redundant,  bureaucratic   rules that hinder or prevent  timely  action and decision-making and  cost money.   Credentialing departments in the various health care entities often act at cross purposes.   The entry of a physician onto a hospital staff or a new practice may be delayed by as much as 120 days and cost hundreds even thousands of dollars. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare.

Physician credentialing cries for an automated standardized solution to streamline and standardize the credentialing process and save money and time for all health care parties.  Verisys.com, a 20 year old company in Alexandria, Virginia, has developed apps, CheckMedic@aol.com and MedPass@aol.com, that aggregate and organize  credentialing data so that all health care entities can communicate across institutional lines and save money and time.

Tweet:  Physician credentialing  is an awkward, time and money consuming process that medical apps can speed up and standardize.