"Money is a headache, and money is the cure." -Everett Mámor

If Dr. Doolittle had put his efforts into designing a medical billing environment, no doubt he would have created one not unlike the one medical practices have to deal with today, a pushmi-pullyu with a labyrinth of innards that are tangled, confusing, often pulling in opposite directions, and, to top it off, ever-changing. In the not-so-distant past, billing and receiving payments from patients and insurance companies was relatively simple, and many individual and small group practices dealt with it that way. "My doctor gave me six months to live," Walter Matthau once quipped, "but when I couldn't pay the bill he gave me six months more." So it went. Read more...

The medical business isn’t what it used to be. The pressures on doctors are steadily bearing down, all but crushing the independent practice out of existence and stifling the aspirations of larger firms. “Physicians have a fairly depressing view of medicine,” says Dr. Thomas Handler, a physician himself who is now an analyst at Gartner Research. ”Sixty-percent in a recent poll said that if they could turn back the clock, they wouldn’t be a doctor at all. Thankfully, technology has the potential to relieve some of that pressure and depression.” Read more...