Health Insurance Quality, Healthcare Quality & Healthcare Reform

Georgia's Healthcare Quality and the Delivery System Should Improve With Healthcare Reform

• The new healthcare reform bill will reduce preventable readmissions, due to a lack of quality healthcare. Within 1 month of discharge, 20% of Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital. In Georgia, that translates to 66,100 readmissions yearly. More focus on primary care and financial incentives for hospitals to do better with arranging follow-up care at discharge time will help to lower readmission rates.
  
  
• Paperwork will diminish. Presently, doctors use up 140 hours yearly and $69,000 in resources dealing with Medicare & health insurance paperwork and bureaucracy. In Georgia, there are 23,489 doctors, which means 3.3 million hours of paperwork and $1.6 billion in resources. The simplification of the process means physicians can spend more time on their patients.
  
  
• There would be incentives for doctors to practice primary care. A 5 to 10% pay raise would be in effect for the 9,500 Georgia doctors in that field.
  
  
• This would encourage the growth of the primary health care field. There are 1.5 million (15%) of Georgians without access to a primary care doctor. Programs with the new healthcare bill would help grow programs in rural areas and those with doctor shortages.