PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS JOIN FORCES TO SIMPLIFY HEALTHCARE COMPLEXITY

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 21—Seeking to broaden support and strengthen their respective administrative simplification efforts, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) have convened the Healthcare Administrative Simplification Coalition (HASC). The coalition represents a broad range of stakeholders, including physicians, hospitals, health plans, employers, labor and government. It aims to identify strategies for reducing the costs and administrative complexity of the U.S. health care system. This marks the first time such a diverse group of organizations has assembled to tackle complexity in health care.

The idea of partnering to promote administrative simplification took root more than two years ago when the MGMA Board of Directors adopted a position statement on what medical group practices could do to simplify the administration and financing of health care. Further investigation suggested that the mounting level of complexity in health care may be diverting hundreds of billions of dollars annually to pay for unnecessary duplication and administrative waste.^{1 2} Recent data from the MGMA Center for Research indicated the cost for a handful of wasteful administrative tasks for a 10-physician medical group practice is almost $250,000 annually.

“Much of the waste generated in our system is a result of administrative busywork or redundancies that add no value to the patient, provider or payer,” said William F. Jessee, MD, FACMPE, president and CEO, MGMA. “With so much concern about the cost of care, we believe it is vital that stakeholders understand the source of many of these costs. By reducing administrative complexity, we can reduce costs and enhance access to care.”

Since its inception, HASC has assembled three times in Washington, D.C. The coalition has endorsed the successful work of the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH) in two of the coalition’s key areas of interest:

• Reducing redundancy in the process of credentialing physicians and other health care professionals to permit them to participate in health plans and to provide services in hospitals and other organizations; and
• Standardizing processes for identifying and confirming patient insurance coverage, including co-payment or deductible amounts.

In addition, HASC will be instituting a communications campaign to broaden awareness of the price of administrative complexity and redundancy—especially among employers and consumers who ultimately bear the cost of health care services.

“No single organization can tackle this immense problem alone,” said Linda Kloss, MA, RHIA, CEO, AHIMA. “We’re involving stakeholders in every category to take a high level look at the problems of complexity across the healthcare spectrum.”

“Complexity and duplication of effort frustrates all of us,” said Douglas E. Henley, MD, FAAFP, executive vice president, AAFP. “We hope to make incremental but significant changes to alleviate some of the dissatisfaction arising from our current, broken health care financing system.”

1 Heffler S, Smith S, Keehan S, Clemens MK, Won G, Zezza M. Health Spending Projections for 2002-2012. Health Affairs Web Exclusives, Feb. 7, 2003.

2 Woolhandler S, Himmelstein DU. The deteriorating administrative efficiency of the U.S. health care system. N Engl J Med 1991; 324:1253:1258.

About HASC
The Healthcare Administrative Simplification Coalition was organized by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). It is committed to reducing the administrative costs and complexity of health care. Other members of the coalition include the nation's leading physician and hospital organizations, health and benefits plans, employers, government agencies and other groups sharing the coalition's goals. Positions taken by the coalition are determined by majority vote and do not necessarily represent the position of all of its members.