One of the first health care reform initiatives launched by President Barack Obama was a call to set up a nationwide, electronic medical records system. Given the insurance industry's heavy involvement in claims documentation, and ACORD's track record in bringing the property and casualty sector up to speed when it comes to standardized forms, wouldn't it make sense for ACORD to take a leading role here as well?
This won't be a slam dunk, as anyone who has visited their doctor lately can attest. Have you seen the rows of file cabinets in most doctor's offices, or caught a glimpse of the rag-tag assortment of handwritten documents spilling out of your file when you sit down for your annual physical?
Or how about all the paperwork you have to fill out every time you see a new doctor, take a test at a new facility or have work done at a hospital? We're drowning in paper, and every individual and institution has their own style when it comes to forms–even though everyone is after the same information, starting with who insures you.
It would be great if ACORD could lead the way here, at least from the insurance industry's side, in standardizing the forms used to secure critical data from patients, and hopefully getting that information into an electronic format so that it can be shared by various practitioners and facilities.
While standardization on the p&c side was no walk in the park, and single-entry, multi-company interface remains the Holy Grail of the business, standardizing health insurance and medical forms would be even dicier, if only because it's such a politically-charged issue.
Then there are the privacy and confidentiality elements to consider. Those are considerable hurdles by themselves.
But still, ACORD could enter the arena and become one of the most important players in the health care reform debate if they would take on this incredible–and incredibly important–challenge.
While standards will not "save" the health care system, establishing electronic records within the medical and health insurance communities would be a major step towards cost-control and better risk management. It could actually save lives, not just money.
Is ACORD game?
What do you folks think?
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