US physician practices versus Canadians: spending nearly four times as much money interacting with payers.

Physician practices, especially the small practices with just one or two physicians that are common in the United States, incur substantial costs in time and labor interacting with multiple insurance plans about claims, coverage, and billing for patient care and prescription drugs. We surveyed physicians and administrators in the province of Ontario, Canada, about time spent interacting with payers and compared the results with a national companion survey in the United States. We estimated physician practices in Ontario spent $22,205 per physician per year interacting with Canada's single-payer agency--just 27 percent of the $82,975 per physician per year spent in the United States. US nursing staff, including medical assistants, spent 20.6 hours per physician per week interacting with health plans--nearly ten times that of their Ontario counterparts. If US physicians had administrative costs similar to those of Ontario physicians, the total savings would be approximately $27.6 billion per year. The results support the opinion shared by many US health care leaders interviewed for this study that interactions between physician practices and health plans could be performed much more efficiently.

What does it cost physician practices to interact with health insurance plans?

Physicians have long expressed dissatisfaction with the time they and their staffs spend interacting with health plans. However, little information exists about the extent of these interactions. We conducted a national survey on this subject of physicians and practice administrators. Physicians reported spending three hours weekly interacting with plans; nursing and clerical staff spent much larger amounts of time. When time is converted to dollars, we estimate that the national time cost to practices of interactions with plans is at least $23 billion to $31 billion each year.

A house is not a home: keeping patients at the center of practice redesign.

The "patient-centered medical home" has been promoted as an enhanced model of primary care. Based on a literature review and interviews with practicing physicians, we find that medical home advocates and physicians have somewhat different, although not necessarily inconsistent, expectations of what the medical home should accomplish-from greater responsiveness to the needs of all patients to increased focus on care management for patients with chronic conditions. As the medical home concept is further developed, it will be important to not overemphasize redesign of practices at the expense of patient-centered care, which is the hallmark of excellent primary care.

Medical groups' adoption of electronic health records and information systems.

We surveyed a nationally representative sample of medical group practices to assess their current use of information technology (IT). Our results suggest that adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) is progressing slowly, at least in smaller practices, although a number of group practices plan to implement an EHR within the next two years. Moreover, the process of choosing and implementing an EHR appears to be more complex and varied than we expected. This suggests a need for greater support for practices, particularly smaller ones, in this quest if the benefits expected from EHRs are to be realized.

Ambulatory patient safety. What we know and need to know.

While safety risks are widespread in ambulatory settings, there has been insufficient attention directed at developing the evidence base that is needed to improve ambulatory safety. In this article, the current state of knowledge about ambulatory safety is reviewed. A research agenda in ambulatory safety is proposed, as well as a series of potential interventions that could be used to improve safety in the ambulatory setting.