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A Web site to simplify healthcare administration?!

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Fierce Healthcare reports that the Mass Collaborative,  with more than 35 health plans, healthcare providers and trade associations, has developed a new Web site to standardize and simplify healthcare administration processes and costs.

Massachusetts is a rich and high-tech state. The question is whether such sites can be created in less sophisticated places. And economic, political and social constituencies will continue to militate against simplification, as they do in Congress and state legislatures.

Much of American healthcare’s sky-high cost can be attributed to the fact  that hospitals and other providers (who are the highest paid in the world) must negotiate multiple contracts with insurers. The cliche is the Western Europeans are the most bureaucratic and rep-tape-bound nations, when, in fact, from America’s healthcare ”system” to our multi-jurisdictional regulatory ”system” to our incomprehensible tax ”system,” America is much worse.

Fierce Healthcare reports that the aforementioned Web site ”features standardized industry forms and strategies to address insurance eligibility verification and claim appeals. Its goal is to take the cost and complexity out of the system and improve the overall end-to-end experience for healthcare providers, payers and patients in the state, according to Lynn Nicholas, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Hospital Association.”

It’s hard to believe that this will “take the cost and complexity” out of the system, but let’s grant Ms. Nichols poetic license.

 

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