Sachin H. Jain, President and CEO of SCAN Group and Health Plan, posted on LinkedIn:
“I use the expression ‘normalizing the abnormal’ to describe the broken current state of American healthcare.
Here are a couple of abnormal behaviors we have normalized:
- Introducing waits and delays to care through prior authorization when someone’s life is on the line. Prior authorization may be necessary to manage costs and quality – but it doesn’t need to take weeks/months. What about setting a 24 hour standard? Healthcare isn’t meant to be a never-ending game of ping pong with doctors and health plans arguing about care.
- High deductible health plans. Health insurance companies introduced these plans to promote greater stewardship of healthcare dollars. Good idea in theory. Except the lack of first-dollar coverage leaves many people feeling like they have no coverage so they avoid accesssing healthcare altogether.
- Out-of-network professional billing for in-network facilities. The idea that you can go to an in-network facility and be treated by a doctor who is out-of-network and receive a huge bill for it on the other side is one that defies basic consumer standards. It’s something abnormal that we normalized.
- Healthcare’s obscene focus on documentation to get paid. It’s one thing to write a complete note for clinical purposes. But there has to be a better, simpler way to bill for clinical services than the system we have in place.
What’s something abnormal you’ve observed in US healthcare that we have normalized?”