PAPERWORK DIAGNOSED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, January 15, 1993                   TAG: 9301150100
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Short
PAPERWORK DIAGNOSED
Every time a patient visits a doctor, it generates seven to 10 pieces of paper - even in this age of computer enlightenment.
The American Medical Association says doctors spend an average 17 hours a week on "administrative duties" - filling out patient charts, ordering lab tests, justifying hospital stays to cost-conscious insurers. The vast majority of these tasks are done on paper.
No wonder. Doctors rely on high-tech machinery to test and treat patients, but most have yet to embrace the computer keyboard. Their offices represent a kind of last frontier when it comes to basic technology.
A typical patient visit generates a bill, entries into the patient's record, perhaps an order for a lab test (and subsequent lab bill) or a prescription, the insurance form, the insurance company's payment statement to the doctor and an explanation of benefits for the patient. That's all assuming the insurance company doesn't have any questions.
Industrywide, sorting, shuffling and processing billions of pieces of paper cost at least $40 billion a year. Some say it's more like $90 billion, or about double our annual trade deficit with Japan.
It's driving health care costs higher along with lofty doctors' fees, pricey medical technology and expensive drugs.
"It's a bad problem," said Richard Landen, spokesman for the Health Insurance Association of America, a trade group. "People - the payers, patients, doctors, hospitals - are drowning in paperwork."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB