Healthcare & Health Insurance Quality After Reform In North Carolina

The new 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 North Carolina, that translates to 79,200 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 North Carolina, there are 26,716 doctors, which means 3.7 million hours of paperwork and $1.8 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 10,300 North Carolina doctors in that field.

This would encourage the growth of the primary health care field. There are 498,000 (5%) of North Carolina residents without access to a primary care doctor. Programs with the new bill would help grow programs in rural areas and those with doctor shortages.