Health Care Reform and the Presidential Candidates

September 30, 2012 -  The September 26 issue of New England Journal of Medicine contains these statements by President Obama and Governor Romney on their positions and visions of health reform.   The statements are directed to physicians,  59%  of whom are pessimistic about the future of the health system  and 92% of whom are unsure about the future or where they will fit in over the next five  years according the Physicians Foundation  national survey of 630,000 physicians,which was released on September 24.

Securing the Future
of American Health Care

President Barack Obama

From the moment I took office, the central challenge we have confronted as a nation has been to recover and rebuild from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We’ve taken extraordinary steps to repair the immediate damage and lay the foundation for an economy built to last. And a critical first step on this journey has been taking action to restore health care as a basic pillar of middle-class security.

Because of you, America is blessed with the world’s most talented health care professionals, who do a heroic job serving and saving our citizens. But for years you have faced a health care system that was increasingly fractured. Insurance companies had unchecked power to dictate care and cap and cancel your patients’ in-surance. Tens of millions of Americans were left uninsured and underinsured. Health carecosts were growing at an unsustainable rate, and our delivery system rewarded quantity of care over quality of care. You were spending more of your time on insurance forms and appeal letters — and less time doing what you trained to do: care for patients. But after a century of trying, a broad coalition of doctors, nurses, hospitals, businesses, AARP, and patients helped me sign into law the Affordable Care Act.

Supporters and detractors alike refer to the law as Obamacare. I don’t mind, because I do care. And because of Obamacare we’re moving forward toward a health care system that broadly provides health security.

For the majority of Americans who get health insurance through their employer, the law won’t change that, but it will make their coverage more secure and affordable. Today, 105 million people have seen a lifetime cap on their coverage lifted, so your patients no longer face the tragedy of approaching a lifetime limit in the middle of a round of chemotherapy or an episode in the ICU. Most of your patients can now get preventive care without paying deductibles and copays, care that you know saves lives, from early colon- and breast-cancer screenings to cardiovascular tests and flu shots. Because of new limits on insurance overhead costs, 13 million Americans got more than $1 billion in rebates — and by 2019, economists believe, family premiums will be about $2,000 less.

The law also roots out waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, gets rid of insurance overpayments, reinvests those savings back into the sys- tem, and adds 8 years to the solvency of Medicare. Obamacare is closing the Medicare doughnut hole — saving people an average of $600 last year — and bolstering your efforts to get your patients to adhere to their medications. More than 3 millionyoung adults who would otherwise be uninsured have coverage on their parents’ plan until they are 26 years old, and up to 17 million children with preexisting conditions are no longer at risk of being denied coverage. Small-business owners are getting tax credits to provide coverage for their workers and will soon be able to pool together to leverage better rates, just like big corporations.

As you surely experience every day, we are also seeing substantial movement in the emergence of new care models. Everyone understands the limits of our current system, which rewards increases in the quantity of care, not improvements in the quality. Still, change has been difficult — and that’s why my administration has been so encouraged by the response to the reforms in the health care law. Across the country, provider groups are working with us to form accountable care organizations, and more and more hospitals are moving toward bundled payments. We are partnering with hospitals across the country to prevent health care–associated infections and avoid preventable readmissions —and meeting our goals together could save $35 billion and 60,000 lives over 3 years. And we are building our health care workforce, recognizing the demands of an aging population as well as the needs of peo-ple who will become newly insured. As we move forward, we will remain a partner in working to-gether to strengthen our system and help you de-liver the best possible care.

Of course, there is more to come, since many of the law’s provisions take effect in 2014, when 30 million currently uninsured people will finally begin to find affordable coverage. Our insurance market will be strengthened so insurance compa-nies cannot deny coverage or charge anyone more on the basis of a preexisting condition, and middle-class families that don’t get insurance at work can receive tax credits to finally make coverage affordable. As a result, for the first time in American history, people who lose their jobs, change jobs, start a business, or retire early will know that they can find insurance for themselves and their families.

If I am elected for a second term, I will follow through on all the work we have started together to implement the Affordable Care Act. I have also been clear that additional steps are needed. We need a permanent fix to Medicare’s flawed payment formula that threatens physicians’ reimbursement, rather than the temporary measures that Congress continues to send to my desk. I support medical malpractice reform to prevent needless lawsuits without placing arbitrary caps that do nothing to lower the cost of care. NOT A PRAYER I also know we must continue to support life-sciences research and ensure that our regulatory system helps bring new treatments and tools to pharmacies, doctors’ offices, and hospitals across the country. I will keep Medicare and Medicaid strong, working to make the programs more efficient without undermining the fundamental guarantees.

My opponent in this election, Mitt Romney, has a radically different vision for the future of our health care system — even if it means running from his past as the architect of health reform in Massachusetts. He would begin by repealing Obamacare on day 1. Your patients would once again be charged excessive copays for preventive care, and millions of Americans would be one illness or injury away from bankruptcy. He would undo the progress we are making toward a more coordinated delivery system.

Romney and his running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan, have proposed a budget that could force drastic cuts to investment in medi- cal research, eliminating 1600 National Institutes of Health grants and slowing our progress on scien- tific and medical breakthroughs. They have pledged to turn Medicaid into a block grant and slash its funding by a third — plunging tens of millions more Americans into the ranks of the uninsured and leaving our hospitals and health care providers to grapple with an increasing burden of uncompensated care. And they are committed to ending Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher program, with insurance companies set to make millions while seniors and people with disabilities are forced to pay thousands more every year.

This election offers a fundamental choice between those two very different visions for the future of our country. Although the debate over Obamacare has been divisive, I signed the legislation not because it was good politics, but because it was good for the country. It enshrines a core principle that makes us who we are as Americans: that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.

We will implement the law and work together to improve where we can. But our country simply can’t afford to refight old political battles, reopen old wounds, and return to the way things were. We are a nation that does what is hard and what is necessary and what is right. And we will be better off 5, 10, 20 years from now because we had the courage and foresight to keep moving forward.

Replacing Obamacare with Real Health Care Reform

Governor Mitt Romney

Health care is at once among our nation’s greatest strengths and most serious challenges. People come from around the world to receive treatment in America’s top medical centers, yet too many of our own citizens have difficulty gaining access to basic services. No issue is of deeper or more personal concern than guaranteeing the health of our loved ones. No American should ever have to fear being left uncared for in the middle of the world’s most advanced health care system.

Unfortunately, our challenges grow worse every year. Higher premiums cut sharply into paychecks that never seem to increase. Losing a job means losing insurance cover- age at the moment a family can least afford it, and those with preexisting conditions can be left with nowhere to turn, despite needing the greatest care. The sheer volume of red tape overwhelms eventhe most savvy consumers, while taking too much of each doctor’s time and slowing innovation in life sciences. Through it all, experts continue to warn that the current path is unsustainable — that for all its frustrations, the system is becoming more expensive and will eventually bankrupt our government.

President Obama’s 2700-page federal takeover does not solve our problems. His $1 trillion in tax increases hits the middle class hard and drives medical innovation overseas. His $700 billion in Medicare cuts “will not be viable,” according to the program’s trustees, jeopardizing access to care for senior citizens and throwing millions of beneficiaries off the coverage they rely on. Millions of other Americans who were told they could keep their coverage will lose it, and more than one third of new coverage will come through the dramatic expansion of a broken Medicaid system.

After all this, his plan still fails to control costs (according to Medicare’s chief actuary) or to provide a long-term solution to the nation’s entitlement crisis (according to the Treasury Secretary), so he leaves those tasks to a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats empowered to sidestep Congress and impose drastic cuts.

If elected President, I will repeal Obamacare and replace it — not with another massive federal bill that purports to solve all our problems from Wash-ington, but with common-sense, patient-centered reforms suited to the challenges we face.

In the health care system that I envision, costs will be brought under control not because a board of bureaucrats decrees it but because everyone —providers, insurers, and patients — has incentives to do it. Families will have the option of keeping their employer-sponsored coverage, but they will also be empowered to enjoy the greater choice, portability, and security of purchasing their own insurance plans. As a result, they will be price-sensitive, quality- conscious, and able to seek out the features they want. Insurers will have to compete for their business. And providers will find themselves operating in a context where cost and price finally matter. Competition among providers and choice among consumers has always been the formula for better quality at lower cost, and it can succeed in health care as well.

To achieve this aim, we must end tax discrimination against persons purchasing insurance, we must strengthen and expand health savings accounts, and we must establish strong consumer protections. The result will be patients who can confidently choose the coverage that is right for them, who know and care what health care costs, and who re- ward providers that deliver effectively. For this choice to be meaningful, insurance market reforms must promote competition by eliminating onerous man- dates, facilitating purchasing pools, and opening up an interstate market. Regulation must prevent insurers from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions who maintain continuous coverage.

A strengthened system must also be one where America continues to lead the world in innovation and where we continue to attract the best and the brightest, both from our own towns and from around the world, to the practice of medicine. Doctors should spend more time treating patients and less time practicing defensive medicine or processing paperwork.

Innovators should increase their investments in new cures, and those cures should reach the market faster.

Achieving these goals requires medical malpractice reform, a streamlined regulatory framework to support the interoperability of information technology, and strong Food and Drug Administration leadership committed to a practical and predictable approval process that appropriately evaluates risk.

Finally, for our health care system to work for all Americans, we must have government programs that effectively serve our senior citizens and people in need without breaking the bank. In other words, we need genuine entitlement reform.

I will make no changes to Medicare for those enrolled in the program today or enrolling during the next 10 years. For younger Americans, I will implement a system similar to that used by members of Congress. Future beneficiaries will have a set of Medicare-approved, guaranteed-coverage plans to choose from, including today’s traditional fee-for-service option. Plans will participate in a competitive bidding process to establish the premiums they will charge, as they do in the Medicare prescription drug plan that has so effectively controlled cost.

The government will then provide premium support, set relative to the competitively bid premiums and made more generous for the poor and the sick than for the wealthy, which ensures that each beneficiary can afford high-quality coverage. This approach will guarantee senior citizens the financial support and high-quality care they deserve while relying on competition and choice — not bureaucrats — to deliver significant savings.

Nor can our society ever turn its back on those who cannot afford the care they need. We will provide support for low-income Americans and those uninsured persons whose preexisting conditions push the cost of coverage too high for them to pay themselves. But my experience as a governor and the lessons from the President’s attempt at a one-size-fits-all national solution convince me that it is states — not Washington — that should lead this effort.

I will convert Medicaid into a block grant that properly aligns each state’s incentives around using resources efficiently. Each state will have the flexibility to craft programs that most effectively address its challenges — as I did in Massachusetts, where we got 98% of our residents insured without raising taxes.

Everyone can agree on the goal of health care reform: ensuring affordable access to high-quality care for all Americans. The question is how. Whenever President Obama claims that only Obamacare helps those with preexisting conditions, I am reminded of the woman in Iowa who found affordable coverage in a high-risk pool despite a preexisting condition.

The President’s campaign took credit, but as it turned out, the high-risk pool created by Obamacare had actually turned her away . . . at which point she discovered that her state already offered a high-risk pool that met her needs. Whenever he claims that only Obamacare helps those under the age of 26 stay on their parents’ insurance, I am reminded that some of our nation’s largest insurers have already announced they would offerhis option regardless of what the law requires . . . because they are responding to consumer demands in the market.

President Obama believes the answer lies in a bigger government that decides what care Americans should receive and how much providers should be paid for it.

But his plan has already failed to deliver on virtually every promise he made, and its components are failing as quickly as they go into effect. It must be repealed. I believe the answer lies with patients and families, with reformed insurance markets and fair competition, with strong consumer protections and real entitlement reform.

My plan tackles our health care challenges without a federal takeover of the entire system. Instead, it relies on markets over regulations, doctors and patients over bureaucrats, and tailored state programs over a 2700-page “solution” from Washington.

Tweet:   President Obama  proposes to keep on implementing his health care law as it; Governor Romney would repeal the law and rely on market reform.

What Physicians Want to Avoid Collapse of U.S. Health System

You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,

How it went to pieces all at once –

All at once, and nothing first-

Just as bubbles do when they burst.

O.W, Holmes, MD, (1809-1894), The Deacon’s Masterpiece

 I believe that the key statistics, quoted directly from the report below, clearly show that the U.S. healthcare system, which has become increasingly out of control year after year for decades, is in real danger of collapse, and that the Affordable Care Act is more the last straw than culprit.

James Doulgeris, “New Survey Validates That U.S. Physicians Are Ailing”, Physicians Practice, September 27, 2012. Doulgeris is referring to the Physicians Foundation Survey.

September 29, 2012 – I do not like what I see may be coming – the collapse of the U.S. health system as the physician shortage intensifies and escalates and as the business community begins to withdraw coverage.

My evidence for this dommsday scenario is personal, and it is skimpy.   In the last 11 days, as I have posted these 7 reports on this blog, 4 of them related to  the Physicians Foundation survey of 630,000 U.S. physicians and 3 of them to the collapse of confidence in the health system, the number of readers of my blog has doubled then tripled.

·         September 17, Crisis of Confidence in Health System

·         September 22, Revenge of the EHR Nerds

·         September 24, Physician Foundation Survey of 630,000 Physicians

·         September 27, Obamacare and Innovation

·         September 27, Physician Morale at All Time Low

·         September 28, Obamacare, Business, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

·         September 28, New Study Validates That U.S. Physicians are Ailing

The common denominator of these posts is that the physician and business communities, with mounting evidence of uncontrolled costs and the dampening effects of federal regulations, have lost faith in the health law to provide affordable access to care to more Americans.  

As a result, physicians are pulling out of private practice, the physician shortage is intensifying, businesses are dropping coverage, and higher costs are shifting to health consumers.

So how does one turn around the Health System Titanic?  What do American physicians, who care for all Americans, and American businessmen, who cover 160 million Americans, want?

I do not presume to talk for American business, but I believe I know what American physicians want.

Physicians want:

·         To be treated as medical professionals, rather than serfs and wards of the federal government.

·         To be trusted to do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons – for patients,  rather than for their own self-interest.

·         To practice medicine, rather to serve as data entry clerks.

·         To have regulations reduced, so that they have do not have to hire a staff of 4 or 5  to comply with documentation demands. 

·         To have services paid for on the basis of skill and time spent with patients, rather than by a labyrinthic coding system with 7500 codes created the AMA and CMS.

·         To have a liability system, with rational and just awards for medical injuries, rather than the present open-ended casino system which forces them to practice defensive medicine.

 

·         To be able to maintain a private practice rather than a system that forces them to become employees of large institutions to fulfill administrative functions. 

·         To practice in a system with administrative simplicity and transparency that is clear to doctors and patients. 

·         To be paid reasonable fees by alternative means – phone, email, online consultation, and Skype or by covering a defined population – rather than to always have the physical  presence of the patients.

 

·         To have the freedom and latitude without endless second-guessing  to do what is right for the patients rather than what feeds the bottom line of government and health plans.

·         To have the public realize that health costs do not stem from doctors alone and that government and health plans, not physicians,  set most  physician fees and generate many of the costs.

·         To permit physicians and patients to agree to have contracts outside of Medicare if the physicians and patients so agree.

 

·         To make the medical profession attractive again, so that it attracts the best and brightest among us.

Tweet:  If surveys and actions of physicians and the business community are any indication, the U.S. health system may be on the verge of collapse.

New Survey Validates That US Physicians are Ailing

By James Doulgeris |September 27, 2012

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In the largest survey of its type since one conducted by the Doctor Patient Medical Association a few months back, an even more extensive survey by the Physicians Foundation that generated 13,575 responses from practicing physicians is equally sobering.

The survey was conducted by the recruiting and consulting firm Merritt Hawkins in an e-mail containing 48 questions to 630,000 physicians in active care, 8,000 of which included comments by the respondents ranging from positive to defeated. I believe that the key statistics, quoted directly from the report below, clearly show that the U.S. healthcare system, which has become increasingly out of control year after year for decades, is in real danger of collapse, and that the Affordable Care Act is more the last straw than culprit

Conclusions verbatim from the report:

KEY FINDINGS

Responses to the survey combined with some 8,000 written comments submitted by physicians reflect a high level of disillusionment among doctors regarding the medical practice environment and the current state of the healthcare system. How physicians will respond to ongoing changes now transforming healthcare delivery varies. Many physicians plan to continue practicing the way they are, but over half of physicians surveyed have reached a tipping point and plan to make changes to their practices. Many intend to take one or more steps likely to reduce patient access to their services, limiting physician availability at a time when doctors already are in short supply.

Key findings of the survey include:

Over three quarters of physicians — 77.4 percent — are somewhat pessimistic or very pessimistic about the future of the medical profession.

Over 84 percent of physicians agree that the medical profession is in decline.

The majority of physicians — 57.9 percent — would not recommend medicine as a career to their children or other young people.

Over one third of physicians would not choose medicine if they had their careers to do over.

Physicians are working 5.9 percent fewer hours than they did in 2008, resulting in a loss of 44,250 full-time-equivalents (FTEs) from the physician workforce.

Physicians are seeing 16.6 percent fewer patients per day than they did in 2008, a decline that could lead to tens of millions of fewer patients seen per year.

Physicians spend over 22 percent of their time on non-clinical paperwork, resulting in a loss of some 165,000 FTEs.

Over 60 percent of physicians would retire today if they had the means.

Physicians are not uniform in their opinions — younger physicians, female physicians, employed physicians and primary-care physicians are generally more positive about their profession than older physicians, male physicians, practice owners, and specialists.

Over 52 percent of physicians have limited the access Medicare patients have to their practices or are planning to do so.

Over 26 percent of physicians have closed their practices to Medicaid patients.

In the next one year to three years, over 50 percent of physicians plan to cut back on patients, work part-time, switch to concierge medicine, retire, or take other steps that would reduce patient access to their services.

Over 59 percent of physicians indicate passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (i.e., “health reform”) has made them less positive about the future of healthcare in America.

Over 82 percent of physicians believe doctors have little ability to change the healthcare system.

Close to 92 percent of physicians are unsure where the health system will be or how they will fit into it three to five years from now.

Over 62 percent of physicians said Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are either unlikely to increase healthcare quality and decrease costs or that that any quality/cost gains will not be worth the effort.

Physicians are divided on the efficacy of medical homes, and many (37.9 percent) remain uncertain about their structure and purpose.

Over 47 percent have significant concerns that EMR poses a risk to patient privacy

Over 62 percent of physicians estimate they provide $25,000 or more each year in uncompensated care.

 

 

Obamacare, Business,  and the Law of Unintended Consequences

All of this is now threatened by the only law that is guaranteed to pass in Washington: the law of unintended consequences.

Evan Bayh,  Democrat,  Former Governor and Senator from Indiana,  “Obamacare’s Tax Raid on Medical Devices, “ Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2012

September 28, 2012 -  There used to be game show called “Truth or Consequences.”   If you believe the truth  unintended consequences are at work in  the health care law, passed by Congress.  Even the bulk of the law does not kick in until 2014, the present  consequences include:

·         Raising costs of family coverage by $2500 instead of lowering costs by $2500 as promised.

·        Motivating  employers to postpone hiring until they have a clear picture of the economic consequences of Obamacare.

 

·         Creating incentives for at least 10% of employers to drop coverage as a less expensive alternative than paying the penalty for not offering coverage. 

·         Leading many large employers and insurers to change coverage to  voucher-type system where workers are given a set amount to money and told to shop for the best deal.

·         Driving private practitioners, who are essentially small businessmen, into the arms of hospital employers, because the doctors can no longer afford to care for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

 

·         Exacerbating the physician shortage by causing at least half of physicians to leave practice for other alternatives – retiring, concierge medicine,  cash-only practices, locum tenens, or nonclinical positions.

·         Burdening taxpayers with more than $510 billion in new taxes directly or indirectly related to Obamacare

• Antagonizing small and large businesses through heavy regulations and increased costs of doing business and offering health insurance to emplpyees, which is why the Chamber of Commerce, The National Federation of Independent Businesses, and other business organizations oppose Obamacare.

·         Taxing the medical device industry with a 2.3% tax on sales of devices, which amounts to a 15% tax on profits.

Of the medical device tax, Evan Bayh, former Democratic Senator from Indiana,  has this to say:

“The Supreme Court decision in June upholding the Affordable Care Act leaves in place a tax on medical devices that threatens thousands of American jobs and our global competitiveness. It will also stifle critical medical innovation in the industry that gave us defibrillators, pacemakers, artificial joints, stents, chemotherapy delivery systems and almost every device we depend on to save lives.”

“The 2.3% tax will be charged to manufacturers on each sale and takes effect in January. Many U.S. device companies, in response, have already announced layoffs, canceled plans for domestic expansion and slashed research-and-development budgets. This month, Welch Allyn—a maker of stethoscopes and blood-pressure cuffs—announced that it will lay off 10% of its global workforce over the next three years, but all of the jobs being cut are in the U.S.”

“The medical-device industry has been a great American success story. More than 400,000 U.S. workers are employed in this sector directly, and another two million, including those involved in supply and distribution, benefit indirectly. At a time when the economy struggles to produce good jobs, medical-device positions pay well. Average compensation is $58,188 annually compared with a national average of $41,673 annually for all employment, a 2010 Pew Foundation report found.”

“Especially hard hit could be the hundreds of small companies developing medical software applications. These apps promise to revolutionize the practice of medicine—for instance, by delivering blood-sugar test results for diabetics. The IRS is deciding now whether to treat apps as medical devices subject to the tax.”

“The adverse effect of this confiscatory level of taxation on traditional device makers is already clear. In my state of Indiana alone, Cook Medical has canceled plans to build one new U.S. facility annually in each of the next several years, and Zimmer plans to lay off 450 workers, while Hill-Rom expects to lay off 200. Stryker, based in Michigan, anticipates having to lay off 1,000 workers.”

Tweet:   Obamacare and  regulations and taxes it imposes threatens  vitality, innovation,  and profitability of businesses and medical pratices.

Software to Increase Physician Morale By Increasing Efficiency

Every physician has a favorite innovation.

Anonymous

September 27, 2012 -   Lately I’ve been writing posts on loss of physician morale.   Why the loss?  Because physicians  can’t keep up with escalating  federal regulations, including meeting demands of new ICD-10 coding, qualifying for EHR meaningful use criteria,  getting paid for the right codes, worrying about getting sued by patients or the government for non-compliance, and handling the low reimbursements of  new Medicaid and Medicare patients.   Physicians are so distracted they no longer have time to deal with quality care or spending quality time with patients.

So what can physicians do?  They can do three things.

One, go to work for the hospital or large health organizations who can handle the administrative or liability paperwork require to function in the brave new world of health reform.

Two, drop out of regulated  3^rd party medicine, by converting to  concierge medicine,   cash-only practices, or do locum tenens.

Three, find some innovative solution that allows them to stay in private practice, make a living, avoid malpractice, become more efficient and productive, engages patients in such a way to draw upon their unique knowledge, and practice quality medicine.

My Favorite Innovation

My favorite medical innovation is the Instant Medical History, which I have been following for ten years and which I highlighted in my 2007 book Innovation-Driven Health Care, The Instant Medical History  is now being used by more than 10,000 physicians to facilitate their practices.

Here is how the company describes their Instant Medical History product.

Instant Medical History, patient interview software, interviews patients to begin gathering the subjective history prior to the encounter.

“Branching logic enables patients to progress quickly through adjustable questionnaires from an extensive medical knowledgebase. Sophisticated technology enables this information to transfer to EMRs. Physician productivity increases because as much as sixty percent of the medical data necessary to complete the visit note can be provided by patients and automatically documented in medical terminology through the Internet, in exam rooms, or in waiting areas before the visit.”

We are the leading provider of patient interviewing technology.

“Our vision is to become an indispensable part of the way patients and physicians communicate. Our solutions are used by physicians each day to facilitate physician-patient communication in a variety of practice settings. Our software has been recognized by vendor associations, consultants, and industry peers as an invaluable component of medical history software and the future of healthcare."

What does the Instant Medical History software accomplish?

1)      It engages the patient directly, by drawing on their knowledge, their complaint, their symptoms, and their family and social history.

2)      It satisfies the patient,  who now has the satisfaction of knowing  his/her story is being considered comprehensively from their point of view.

3)      It efficiently  combines the  art of medicine  with  data made possible  by modern information technology.

4)      It is practical and workable since 70% of doctors are now using EHRs to some extent and 70% to 80% of the population has household computers.

5)      It saves 6 to 8 minutes in each patient encounter because doctors can get  to the root of the problem immediately.

6)      It minimizes malpractice risks because patients understand their problem is being considered fully.

7)      It gives the physicians the framework and the data for submitting a claim for a comprehensive  examination.

8)      It increases diagnostic accuracy by leaving nor historical stone unturned.

9)      It is an innovation approach to a fundamental problem – giving the physician time to address patients’ problems in a time-efficient manner.

10)  It reduces overhead by decreasing  the number of office staff required to practice.

11)  It allows patients to leave the office with a documented medical history, minimizing misunderstanding  of what occurred during the medical encounter and what plans are for treatment.

Tweet:   The Instant Medical History is patient interview software that accomplishes multiple purposes, including  lifting physician morale.