Single processor ensures medical care efficiency

Medical care: Which is better, single payer or a competitive insurance payer?

Let us ignore all the past discussion of who is covered and who gets the best results. Let us drill down to only one comparison: the cost of record keeping, billing and collection.

The doctor or provider has just one system to understand and comply with in a single payor system. With our current system, they must understand dozens of insurance plans for the typical situation in the U.S., with different rules, and each insurer wants the other to pay. This adds at least 20 percent to the cost of medical care, requiring a staff for that purpose alone. Getting paid is in doubt in the U.S. system, and the delay can be crippling. It is so bad you do not see standalone doctors anymore. They have to align themselves with large institutions just to deal with the billing and collection.

We can make a single processor (for either system) with the blockchain software platform taking away all those negatives. Blockchain is a distributed system, interconnected, yet with complete confidentiality. More than that, it can connect to your monitoring devices (smart watch, CPAP, etc.), which, combined with medical history, diagnosis, and artificial intelligence, can predict your needs for medical care. You come in when you need to and not when you don’t, scheduled for you. That is real efficiency.

Don’t look to the past for a solution, look to the future to solve the problems of medical care.

This story was originally published January 11, 2018 at 4:21 PM with the headline "Single processor ensures medical care efficiency."