I was listening to the Acquired episode on Epic and they touch on the severe cost overruns in our healthcare system. They make a point to share that hospitals aren’t the ones making a killing. It’s insurance companies.
They make a compelling argument that if you add up the total that you pay to insurance, taking into account what your employer pays, there’s no way you get that much value out of your health insurance annually.
insurance is always a gamble, and the house always wins
don’t insure anything you can afford to lose, and save up money you’d put into insurance in a HISA
that said, things you can’t afford to lose probably include your house, someone else’s lamborghini, your health
buuuuuuut US health care is set up for bargaining: hospitals overcharge, pharmacies overcharge, drug companies overcharge because they all know insurance companies aren’t gonna pay what they actually charge because they have bargaining power… which, if you don’t have insurance, leaves you holding the fucking ball with no bargaining power
… all of this is said as an aussie, with universal healthcare and only a passing (but real life) experience of the US healthcare system (and in general a system that will protect me from fucking up so hard i can’t even imagine being completely destitute), so grain of salt n all that
Oh man, epic is such complicated garbage that even with a company brought in to set it up, the center I worked at during the rollout was a fucking mess. I left 14-18 months after initial deployment and they were still ironing bugs out, and I heard they rolled back within a year or so of leaving. Also, it’s almost hilarious how often I hear nurses bitching about using epic just when I have to go in for anything, and none of them are related to the place I worked.
I respectfully disagree after you try other EHRs like Cerner lol
I also haven’t heard complaints about Epic with bugs at least in my org. They are pretty user friendly especially when we have some staff that can barely type. The only complaint was documentation. Nursing documentation was tedious with like over 250 options for “adult assessment” but they’ve slimed it down to like 50 earlier this year for my healthcare system. Lastly, I think things work better the more money hospitals put in the EHR. I was per diem for another healthcare system. It was pretty cool how many other features they had than ours.
Must just be one of those “yeah my product is awful but have you seen the other guy?” sort of situations. I never had to use the EMR directly outside of troubleshooting, but both epic and the previous EMR were pretty garbage so I don’t really have a good baseline to go off of.
The Acquired episode made it clear that the customer isn’t the people who use the software. Their customer is the CEO and the CIOs of hospital systems.
yeah my product is awful but have you seen the other guy
Yeah, it’s this. I worked at Epic somewhat recently, and I’ve since worked with former Cerner/Oracle folks too. To Epic’s credit, they’ve never been acquired, and are better for it.
There’s a lot of vocational awe across the board, people genuinely trying their best to make the product good. But healthcare is inherently complicated, because people are complicated. Each individual health system needs it customized to their specific needs, and over time this can get hairy to support. Add on to that that regulations and guidelines literally change every year, and it can become really hard to make headway on more meaningful changes when you’re just trying to stay compliant.
This leads to burnout on the software support side, Epic churns through new hires like crazy - average tenure has been way down since COVID-19 (you can Google their response to that), so it’s a revolving door of 21-25 year olds keeping that ship afloat.
Also, yes, insurance companies are the ones making the big money, by a mile.
I have a number of complex chronic health problems and I usually hit my out-of-pocket limit around April every year. I find spiteful glee in costing my health insurance tens of thousands of dollars every year. (And every penny of it is actually medically necessary.)
I was listening to the Acquired episode on Epic and they touch on the severe cost overruns in our healthcare system. They make a point to share that hospitals aren’t the ones making a killing. It’s insurance companies.
They make a compelling argument that if you add up the total that you pay to insurance, taking into account what your employer pays, there’s no way you get that much value out of your health insurance annually.
It’s a metaphorical gun to the head. It’s not designed to help. The purpose of the system is what it does.
insurance is always a gamble, and the house always wins
don’t insure anything you can afford to lose, and save up money you’d put into insurance in a HISA
that said, things you can’t afford to lose probably include your house, someone else’s lamborghini, your health
buuuuuuut US health care is set up for bargaining: hospitals overcharge, pharmacies overcharge, drug companies overcharge because they all know insurance companies aren’t gonna pay what they actually charge because they have bargaining power… which, if you don’t have insurance, leaves you holding the fucking ball with no bargaining power
… all of this is said as an aussie, with universal healthcare and only a passing (but real life) experience of the US healthcare system (and in general a system that will protect me from fucking up so hard i can’t even imagine being completely destitute), so grain of salt n all that
Oh man, epic is such complicated garbage that even with a company brought in to set it up, the center I worked at during the rollout was a fucking mess. I left 14-18 months after initial deployment and they were still ironing bugs out, and I heard they rolled back within a year or so of leaving. Also, it’s almost hilarious how often I hear nurses bitching about using epic just when I have to go in for anything, and none of them are related to the place I worked.
I respectfully disagree after you try other EHRs like Cerner lol
I also haven’t heard complaints about Epic with bugs at least in my org. They are pretty user friendly especially when we have some staff that can barely type. The only complaint was documentation. Nursing documentation was tedious with like over 250 options for “adult assessment” but they’ve slimed it down to like 50 earlier this year for my healthcare system. Lastly, I think things work better the more money hospitals put in the EHR. I was per diem for another healthcare system. It was pretty cool how many other features they had than ours.
Must just be one of those “yeah my product is awful but have you seen the other guy?” sort of situations. I never had to use the EMR directly outside of troubleshooting, but both epic and the previous EMR were pretty garbage so I don’t really have a good baseline to go off of.
The Acquired episode made it clear that the customer isn’t the people who use the software. Their customer is the CEO and the CIOs of hospital systems.
That would explain a lot. I’m pretty sure the CEO/CFO (can’t remember which) got let go for embezzlement or something a year or so after I was gone.
Yeah, it’s this. I worked at Epic somewhat recently, and I’ve since worked with former Cerner/Oracle folks too. To Epic’s credit, they’ve never been acquired, and are better for it.
There’s a lot of vocational awe across the board, people genuinely trying their best to make the product good. But healthcare is inherently complicated, because people are complicated. Each individual health system needs it customized to their specific needs, and over time this can get hairy to support. Add on to that that regulations and guidelines literally change every year, and it can become really hard to make headway on more meaningful changes when you’re just trying to stay compliant.
This leads to burnout on the software support side, Epic churns through new hires like crazy - average tenure has been way down since COVID-19 (you can Google their response to that), so it’s a revolving door of 21-25 year olds keeping that ship afloat.
Also, yes, insurance companies are the ones making the big money, by a mile.
I have a number of complex chronic health problems and I usually hit my out-of-pocket limit around April every year. I find spiteful glee in costing my health insurance tens of thousands of dollars every year. (And every penny of it is actually medically necessary.)