Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Anonymous said:Maybe they've discovered that the current IDTF model is going the way of the dodo.
The only reason it's in jeopardy is because of all the wanna be's who have dropped their monitoring fees to bargain basement pricing and are selling junk devices to doctors who are trying to make a quick buck.
This is so ignorant and one-sided. I'm not a physician, but I've seen this close up from the prospective of multiple private practice physicians across PCP, General Cardiology, and Invasive Cardiology.
If you're involved in this industry, you have to be smarter than this. You must realize that it costs money to provide quality healthcare. Especially in a time where many practices struggle to make profits too. You cannot expect a physician to invest their groups time and resources on this for a $26.08 professional reimbursement rate. You must realize how much easier it is to refer the patient to the local outpatient hospital lab/diagnostic center for a quick holter monitor than it is to deal with the time and hassles of this dying IDTF model from decades ago.
You must understand that most physicians AREN'T trying to get rich on these services; there's not enough money left for ANYONE to get rich! But you must realize that the time and resources involved for the physician greatly extend passed $26.08.
Let me remind you of what's involved for the physician:
added time explaining the monitor, patient enrollment, added calls from the monitoring center and patient (if after hours is ~$1/call to an answering service; where one call in-bound and another call to inform the physician counts as two calls), daily faxes, time looking and signing faxes mixed in with other faxed lab results, scanning everything into a patients EMR chart, calls from the patient wanting to disconnect the monitor early (again if after hours costs ~$2/each time), reviewing results and signing off, billing the charge and paying 5% to your third party biller, paying $1+ to mail the patient a statement for any balance owed, paying another 2-3% for merchant (credit card) processing of any balance, and finally scanning the study result into the patients EMR chart.
Compared with telling the patient they'll have a 48Hour holter monitor and electronically faxing the order right from the physicians EMR Laptop directly to the outpatient diagnostic/lab center affiliated with the local hospital with one click. Imagine the savings on physician labor, staff labor, resources, aggravation, time, and other third-party vendor costs.
This is why Home Sleep Study monitoring companies provide the physicians $60 per study.