Physician Spend: What You Are Ignoring Will Bite You

Let’s talk fragmentation first. For example, how hospitals begin to create an economic relationship to pay physicians for their oversight for an ICU can start with a Chief Medical Officer, Chief Executive Officer or Chief Nursing Officer. In large systems, who owns strategic physician relationship development, is a crap shoot. It can be anyone. Hence, we begin the dance of fragmentation of ownership. The contractual documentation is off to legal, compliance, and finance, resulting in more fraying of ownership. Piles and piles later….ignored until someone has a question or a gripe. Fragmentation means no one owns it. Smart health care systems are putting together an infrastructure to manage this process, as it represents millions in spending that no one is yet measuring. The payment for physicians is still largely on paper with many hands in it and electronically filed….somewhere…lacking the needed oversight on accrued spend. This process is ripe for trouble. Many systems have created the “great art of auto-pay and ever greens” to be a seemingly effective mode of handling physician administrative payments. What never stops won’t hurt you? Does anyone else have gastric pangs?