KevinMD had a great guest post recently by Mary Pat Whaley on the time associated with a patient visit. I think the title sums up the blog well: “Your 10-Minute Office Visit Needs 8 People and 45 Minutes of Work.”

As Whaley notes, even the shortest of office visits have a lot of work behind-the-scenes that needs to be done; seeing the patient is just a small part of the overall visit.  And, I would submit that far more than 8 people and much more than 45 minutes is required.   Health care is a regulation- and administration-heavy field, and this requires time to make sure the regulatory and administrative rules are followed. For example, HIPAA requires privacy forms to be filled out prior to the patient being seen. Verifying someone’s insurance information is time-intensive. Not to mention ensuring that we charge the patient the right co-pay based on their insurer and insurance plan. On top of that, pay-for-performance programs require time- and technology-intensive data collection during and after the visit. All of this, and more, makes up one “10-minute office visit.”

Whaley concludes: “The practice, the patients and the overseers of health care want each visit to be non-rationed, safe, high-quality, error-free, holistic, pleasant, clean, accurate, efficient and reimbursable.  It’s what we all want.  And it ain’t cheap.”

I have to agree with her. The complexity of the American health care system is incredible. And, the layers of complexity account for much of the cost. Our system has been built by accretion.  We “reform” the system by adding on layers of regulation, of bureaucracy, of administration.  As you look behind the eight people figured in this visit, the cost if not the time includes coders, compliance workers, claims specialists, re-claim specialists, computer network and now electronic health record experts,  lawyers, front office personnel, and even standard maintenance personnel for the  building.

As the regulation and administrative burdens add on, the cost of practicing gets greater and it is harder to cover these expenses with income.  Add to that more and more cuts to cardiology, and it’s no wonder that a large number of private cardiology practices are integrating with hospitals. Last year, the ACC reported the results of a survey of ACC members that found nearly 40 percent of private group practices were currently integrating with hospitals or merging with other practices. An additional 13 percent of all cardiovascular practices were considering hospital integration or a merger in the next three years to help stem the financial burden.

These are uncertain times for cardiology and for the House of Medicine in general.  To be clear, the ACC supports the triple aim of better health, better health care, and at less cost. But to get there, we will have to deal with the repercussions of massive changes, and may I say probably the accretion of more layers, to our health care system. In my opinion, “dealing” with the repercussions will not be enough – we need to shape the discussions if we want to be pleased with the health care system structure of the future.  And, maybe we can even help peal away some of the layers.