Hello. Dr. Keith Smith with you – Surgery Center of Oklahoma. Thank you for joining us in this video blog series.

As ICD-10 looms near in the next few days, I have some thoughts about the coding insanity in this country and what it has led to. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, these codes began to appear and they were a total disaster. But they’ve really trained hospitals and physicians to never miss a code – to always make sure all of the codes were billed for.

This has led to a mentality that I called the ‘revenue maximization’ mentality. In other words, I need to get every drop of blood – every financial drop of blood – out of these patients as I possibly can.

This revenue maximization model is apparent in all of the emails that I get from various vendors that ask me to sign up for courses to learn how to even further maximize my revenue.

Fortunately, there is a different model, and there is a new model that is very exciting and it’s taking this country over. It’s very exciting and I saw it at the Free Market Medical Association Conference just 2-3 weeks ago. It is the how-do-I-deliver-maximum-value model. Indeed, this is how the market works. The market searches out, when it’s allowed to, those who render the greatest value.

In healthcare, that is not the model that is predominant. But it is failing. That model of maximization of revenue – what can I get away with – is failing. And what we’re seeing now is physicians and facilities and even hospitals trying to figure out ways they can demonstrate to the buyer extreme value.

This is all great news and I wanted to place the two different ways of thinking about healthcare financing side by side as ICD-10 (the next coding insanity) looms.

Thank you for joining us. We’ll see you next time.