Healthcare Admin Costs Can Be Tamed, Senators Told – More standardization would go a long way

MedPage Today July 31, 2018
Joyce Frieden

A few simple steps could cut way down on the administrative costs involved in healthcare, several experts said Tuesday at a Senate hearing on reducing healthcare costs.

“There is a good deal that can be done on standardization,” said David Cutler, PhD, professor of applied economics at Harvard University in Boston. “The … complexity of coding is a clear example of this, where an insurer will require additional codes before they’ll pay a higher amount, and that requires additional people to code those additional codes, and then seeing codes going up, insurers will put in more requirements, so standardizing this will make a lot of sense because you don’t have to get into an arms race over that.”

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