Health Care Costs
Physicians are providing a significant amount of care outside of office visits for the growing number of older adult patients with chronic illnesses, highlighting the need to better track unreimbursed medical services, researchers reported in a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The authors found that doctors provided about seven minutes of additional care outside of every 30-minute office visit, amounting to about 7.8 hours of extra clinical work each week for full-time physicians.
The researchers recommend that doctors gather empirical data on the nature and amount of unreimbursed care provided to bolster their case for an overhaul of health care payment policies (Farber et al., Annals of Internal Medicine, 11/20).