As the gun-control debate includes calls for expanded services, critics complain Texas hasn’t accounted for its growing population.
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Bringing into focus a clear and distinct view of the rest of this decade in Texas health care. Offering a sharp perception of what lies ahead and what we must change to keep us all healthy.
Curated by
Texas Medical Association
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Scooped by Texas Medical Association onto Healthy Vision 2020 |
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Modifications to HIPAA may take the focus off patients and pile on administrative work.
Texas Medical Association's insight:
Eliminate costs and hassles that don’t contribute to or add value to patient care
New compliance requirements are bombarding physician practices seemingly every day. Just in January 2012, a new electronic format for claims and other electronic transactions (called “HIPAA 5010”) added new costs to physician practices. The switch to the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems version 10 (ICD-10), currently set for October 2014, will require the adoption of an entirely new coding system to record all possible diagnoses and inpatient procedures. It will add significant physician and staff training costs.
Medicare’s required new PQRS provides a monetary incentive at first but imposes penalties beginning in 2015. A number of new state and federal privacy laws introduce more administrative burden, and severe new penalties for noncompliance. State and federal governments are using more “fraud” detection, resulting in monumental compliance programs that further increase the cost of running a practice. TMA and dozens of other medical societies have written to CMS “about the imminent storm that is about to occur due to simultaneous implementation of multiple programs that will create extraordinary financial and administrative burden, as well as mass confusion, for physicians.” These changes have limited documented evidence they will lower fraud or improve privacy, but complete assurance they will increase the cost of doing business in medicine.
It’s because of the vast number of complex commercial insurance and federal and state regulations that affect physicians and their patients that TMA developed the Calendar of Doom.
The cost to operate a physician’s office continues to climb unabated. Unfunded mandates and hidden regulatory burdens like the ongoing hassles of annually renewing state registration to continue to prescribe needed medications for patients threaten the viability of practices and patients’ access to care. The average cost to staff and run a practice now exceeds $500,000 per physician, and that’s before the physician gets paid a dime. These excessive administrative expenses add to the escalating cost of medical care that are borne by patients, employers, and taxpayers.
Excessive regulations also hurt local economies, which receive nearly $1 million in wages and benefits for each physician in practice. Physician offices employ support staff and often work with nonphysician providers, increasing the total number of employees in the industry to well above the count of physicians alone. In 2009, Texas office-based physicians supported 249,010 jobs. On average, each office-based physician supported 5.8 jobs, including his or her own.
Texas should not burden practices with additional regulatory costs that provide no benefit to patients or their health care. Delete the scoop?
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Invest in mental health and substance abuse community treatment
Mental illness and substance abuse hurt the Texas economy through lost earning potential, treatment of coexisting conditions, disability payments, homelessness, and incarceration.
Mental illness is a leading cause of disability in the United States. About 13 million adults have a debilitating mental illness each year, and almost half of all adults will be affected by mental illness in their lifetime. Five percent of adults have a serious mental illness.About one in five children are affected by a mental health disorder with severe impairment in their lifetime.
More than 8 percent of Texas adults report current depression, and 5.2 percent report serious psychological distress.37 In 2011, almost 30 percent of Texas high school students reported they felt sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks. Suicide is a leading cause of death among Texans under 35 years.
More than 66,000 Texans were cared for in state-funded substance abuse treatment programs in 2010. Substance use is common in Texas students (grades 7-12), with 62 percent reporting they had used alcohol and 17.2 reporting inhalant abuse. Despite significant legislation to curtail drinking and driving, almost 40 percent of Texas driving fatalities are still associated with alcohol use.
In 2009, 23 percent of the adult offenders in Texas state prisons, on parole, or on probation were current or former clients of the Texas public mental health system.43 A Texan with a serious mental illness is eight times more likely to be in a jail than in a hospital or treatment program, at a cost of $50,000 a year. A person in jail without a mental illness costs the state about $22,000 annually.
Mental illness is also strongly associated with high-risk behaviors such as alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use, and results in conditions such as obesity. U.S. mental health costs were estimated to be $57.5 billion in 2006 including the cost of mental health care and the indirect costs of disability caused by mental illness. One recent study estimates that Texas state dollars spent on mental health exceed $13 billion each year.
Mental health treatment costs in the United States totaled almost $9 billion in children in 2006; Medicaid covered more than one-third of these costs.47
Proper care for persons with mental illnesses saves costs associated with the cycle of incarceration, homelessness, and so forth. Assessing the return on investment connected with mental health and substance abuse care is complex because there are many different diagnoses, and the disability caused by each and the treatment plans vary greatly. In 2003, depression cost U.S. employers $44 billion in lost productivity alone. One employee assistance program in California showed a return on investment of $5.17 to $6.47 for every dollar spent on employee assistance for a mental health problem.
While Texas has recently made significant investments in community mental health services, we still rank 50th in state public mental health funding per capita.