U.S. Physician Practices Spend Four Times As Much As Payer Administrative Money As Canadian Counterparts

Mike Cassidy

A commonwealth fund supported studies reported some key findings:

1. Physician practices in the United States spent $82,975.00 per physician per year interacting with payers compared with $22,205.00 in Canada.

• If U.S. physicians had similar administrative costs to their Canadian counterparts, the total annual savings would be $27.6 billion dollars.
• U.S. nurses and medical assistants spent 20.6 hours per week on administrative tasks related to health plans, which is nearly 10 times the 2.5 hours spent by Canadian nursing staff.

I have attached a link with a scan of the highlights of the study.