Americans spend $477 billion a year more on healthcare than other advanced countries. Medicalbillingandcoding.org has a great two part series of infographics (part one and two) that look at some of the truly absurd reasons your stitches cost $1,500.

Part one looks at where all the money goes. The first place to look is at our “routine” visits, which, when they’re compared to other wealthy nations, are much more expensive in the US:

• Need a checkup? It’ll cost you $59, double the cost in Canada, France and the Netherlands.
• Hospital visit? Plan to spend $3,181 – more than triple what you’d spend in France.
• Having a baby? Set aside $7,473, or more than twice what you’d pay in Germany.

And not only do we spend more than other countries – the US ranked last in overall quality of healthcare among surveyed nations. Part two delves into some of the myths and realities of why US healthcare is so expensive. Guess what? It’s not because we like to drink (hooray!), because we’re old, because we’re fat, or because we like to sue our doctors. The real reasons?

• Providers charge more because they can.
• Doctors earn around 5x more than the average patient (most other countries average around 3x more).
• Outpatient spending – which leads to huge profit margins for hospitals – totals 41% of healthcare costs.

But the most important?

That’s right. One of the real reasons healthcare is so expensive is because we’re spending $500 per person on administrative overhead. You know what’s coming next, right? Of course Laserfiche has “an app for that”! Our customers have found some pretty creative ways to reduce their administrative overhead with Laserfiche:

• Pre Billing Consultants, a third-party medical billing company in NJ, has used Laserfiche to automate billing workflow, so a process that used to take three employees a full day now takes one person 15 minutes. (Even better – they’ve redeployed 60% of their FTE’s required to produce a claim to more productive work.)
• Capital Care Medical Group, a physician-owned medical practice, reduced the processing time for invoices 80% by using Laserfiche to create a shared service AP center for their 27 medical offices across upstate NY.
• Iredell Memorial Hospital recovered $40,000 per month in ER revenue loss by eliminating lost and misplaced records.

Check out our new Website to learn how Laserfiche helps medical groups, hospitals and medical billing departments and companies reduce overhead expenses. Or check out our credentialing demo for a real-life example!