Leslie Kane, MA: Hi. I am Leslie Kane, Executive Editor of Medscape Business of Medicine. I am here with Jonathan Bush, Chairman and CEO of athenahealth, a medical billing and technology company. Jon, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today.
There are many changes going on with payments to physicians and medical practices. What are some of the trends that you see?
Jonathan Bush: The biggest change is the idea of physician responsibility for the larger budget. There is now a financial opportunity and potential risk associated with care that happens outside of the examination room. For doctors who are in independent practice, which I know a lot of your readers and viewers are, this is an enormous financial upside because it makes it possible for a doctor to actually profit, to increase take-home pay by reducing the total cost of healthcare by getting aggressive about the way that ancillaries and days in the hospital are utilized. So that is kind of exciting.
The downside is that it is much more complicated. You still have claims that you need to file daily for the professional services that you do in the office. But now you have what we call the "metaclaim," which is the ability to keep track of all the spending that is going on.
