The AMA currently maintains a copyright on the medical billing codes. The Government should set a free and open standard leveling the playing and providing access to smaller companies that will innovate in this area.
Medical Billisng Codes Public Standarization
Tags: electrnic medical record
Comments (5)
A copyright?
The codes that associate a medical procedure with a billing code that the insurance company uses is copyrighted by the AMA. They are known as CPT code. So the only way to use the codes (for instance in a piece of software that does billing) is to pay the AMA a hefty fee. A better explanation is here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Procedural_Terminology
Holy cow.
A much bigger problem is all the different health insurance companies, with each insurance company having different insurance plans that generally require different insurance claim forms.
If you want to get an idea of the headaches involved in this, ask your doctor's staff about how many different claim forms they deal with. A better source may be your local pharmacist who has to deal with all the different insurance companies' drug plans, cards, and forms.
The lack of an agreed upon standardized insurance claim form and standardized insurance card costs all of us.
I would would not disagree with that either. A comprehensive and open billing standard would do wonders for the industry and productivity. The problem is when confusion reigns there are excessive profits to be made. The insurance companies and the AMA have incentives to maintain the status quo.