Home  About  In the News  Publications  Blog  Join  Donate  > Inside Wisconsin  Wisconsin News UW Google Group WI Blog The University of Michigan's first dream.DETROIT installment, Art and Urban Development in Detroit. dream.DETROIT is a year-long community development project. News from the National Office Post-Election Center TI Launched Roosevelt LiveBlogs the Presidential Debate On Campus Midwest Regional Fall Policy Workshop Blum speaks at Vermont Campus Compact conference Coverage of the Johns Hopkins Chapter Launch > More "Prepare your representatives... In a democracy not only government is responsible but people are responsible for what happens." — Eleanor Roosevelt    Wisconsin e Health Program > Roosevelt Home > Wisconsin > Health > Wisconsin e Health Program Your name: Your email: Recipient's name: Recipient's email: Message: To prevent spam, please enter the first letter of the recipient's email and the first letter of the recipient's name in the box below (for example, if the name is "John Doe" and the email is "bigjohn@johndoe.com", you would enter "jb"): There are two components to e health, the patient records component and the billing component.  Addressing one without the other would be a missed opportunity, and that's why it's important to advocate for comprehensive e health records.   The medical records part, doctors say, would improve diagnosis and treatment, reduce medical errors, thus reducing malpractice, malpractice insurance, and saving money.  This might save a bit of time and money for the doctors, but it does not get at the larger rising costs issue.  Implementing any e health records in Wisconsin will cost millions of dollars.  That's why it's necessary to include a billing component along with it, since that actually has a chance to save money over time and constitute meaningful change.     In addition, there are plenty of yet to occur conversations of privacy rights; who has access to view the records, and for what purposes researchers can access the data.  Such issues may complicate the initiative to the point it may not even go through.  Incorporating billing and the medical record is complex as well, but it would truly improve efficiency and may bolster public support.  Namely, if billing is standardized and tied into the medical record, the hospital spends less on filling out the forms.  The basic argument for e-health billing is:  ·         Insurance companies' members constitute their pool of risk.  o        They charge premiums to their members and profit off whatever they don't then pay out to the health care delivery system.  o        The billing is done per patient per individual insurance company, meaning a hospital has to fill out billing forms unique to the insurance company.   o        E billing could streamline the process through reducing the administrative costs.  §         For private health insurance in the US, administrative costs constitute roughly 25% of health care expenditures.   §         However, Medicaid has shown the potential benefit of standard billing practices, as they have kept administrative costs to about 3%.   o        Thus streamlining the billing process would reduce administrative overhead.     The "unforeseen" result of standardizing the billing is the way it could impact the insurance industry.  Removing the insurance company's ability to control billing procedures would shift the focus from the pool of patients to the ways health care providers manage, diagnose and treat diseases.  The result is that insurance companies would change the ways they pay for delivery of services.  Since billing would be not totally in their control, they would be left to compete even more against one another.  They would compete to adopt cost based measures of quality of care.  It would encourage insurance companies to adopt pay for performance measures, and assure doctors stress prevention more.  These things must happen if Americans want to decrease health care costs without decreasing quality of care.  Another way to think about it is that standardizing the billing means standardizing the payments to some extent, thus making the insurance company's ability to maximize their return somewhat dependent on the physician, not on the calculated risk. The e health billing could change the profitability of insurance companies in such a way they may move the industry towards universal coverage.   The Roosevelt Institution is a nonpartisan, nonprofit national think tank devoted to bringing students' policy ideas to the policy process. The opinions expressed on this site are exclusively those of its members. DC Headquarters: Roosevelt Institution / 2100 M St NW Suite 610 / Washington, DC 20037 || (202) 833-1359