Great post James! I'm just not convinced payors, patients, clinicians, and the health care systems that employ us are aligned on what primary care is and the proper cost for the exchange of this service. We all know some patients have more pressing matters than lowering their blood pressure, no matter the cost savings to "the system" when they don't have a stroke. We all want $200 services and $10 copays and scowl at our colleagues who can charge $500 or more for the same work without batting an eye (and get paid for it!). We all work for systems that exist because a few tired thumbs continue to plug holes in dikes that should have long overflowed, if not exploded. Finally, I think many of us have lost faith in the structures and underlying assumptions that brought us to this place, abandoning the only real weapons we possess against the lobbies of insurance and pharmacy. Technology is merely a place where these larger pressures are showing themselves.
Wow. Definitely room to go deeper. I see the relationship - if the institution (payer, government...) understood the value of what we do, really, they would know it can never map to money in the way they expect. This is also part of the fallacy of "big data" improving outcomes at the point of care; it is mostly big data improving the next round of data. Thx
Brilliant stuff, Andrew, thank you. So many opportunities, and reservations. We spend so much time processing data that requires little or no clinical judgement. On the other hand, patients spend so much time answering administrative and survey questions on portals, filling out forms and consents, and being rushed through the system, that what they desperately want is to look a clinician in the eyes and know they are being heard, and understood. Few doctors would want the liabilities of using an AI chatbot to deliver news or instructions to a patient, and few patients would want to hear it that way. BUT - if we can use the technology to beat back the fray, and clear some time for the patient-clinician interactions, it will be amazing. My fear, naturally, is that it won't increase throughput, and may not be how we use it as a result. I look forward to following its development.
Great post James! I'm just not convinced payors, patients, clinicians, and the health care systems that employ us are aligned on what primary care is and the proper cost for the exchange of this service. We all know some patients have more pressing matters than lowering their blood pressure, no matter the cost savings to "the system" when they don't have a stroke. We all want $200 services and $10 copays and scowl at our colleagues who can charge $500 or more for the same work without batting an eye (and get paid for it!). We all work for systems that exist because a few tired thumbs continue to plug holes in dikes that should have long overflowed, if not exploded. Finally, I think many of us have lost faith in the structures and underlying assumptions that brought us to this place, abandoning the only real weapons we possess against the lobbies of insurance and pharmacy. Technology is merely a place where these larger pressures are showing themselves.
Wow. Definitely room to go deeper. I see the relationship - if the institution (payer, government...) understood the value of what we do, really, they would know it can never map to money in the way they expect. This is also part of the fallacy of "big data" improving outcomes at the point of care; it is mostly big data improving the next round of data. Thx
https://workweek.com/2022/12/10/the-future-of-natural-language-processing-in-healthcare/
Interested in your thoughts on the natural language processing improving through put
There is a physician that is already using ChatGPT for approvals from insurance companies
Brilliant stuff, Andrew, thank you. So many opportunities, and reservations. We spend so much time processing data that requires little or no clinical judgement. On the other hand, patients spend so much time answering administrative and survey questions on portals, filling out forms and consents, and being rushed through the system, that what they desperately want is to look a clinician in the eyes and know they are being heard, and understood. Few doctors would want the liabilities of using an AI chatbot to deliver news or instructions to a patient, and few patients would want to hear it that way. BUT - if we can use the technology to beat back the fray, and clear some time for the patient-clinician interactions, it will be amazing. My fear, naturally, is that it won't increase throughput, and may not be how we use it as a result. I look forward to following its development.