Physician manpower shortages, increasing practice business costs, and lower reimbursement rates are forcing physicians to make tough decisions. If patients cannot nd physicians to provide the care they need, their only alternative will be the hospital emergency room and costs will skyrocket. In time, not only Medicaid patients, but even privately insured patients will have di culty nding a physician and will be forced to absorb indirect costs associated with an ine cient health care system. Using technology to treat patients. Expectations regarding healthcare quality, e ciency, and patient safety are constantly evolving. When you add technology to the mix, determining how to adapt while still providing hands-on, quality healthcare is challenging. Several evolving areas ofmedicine that we see on the horizon could require legislative authority or oversight involvement Telemedicine is not new. What is new is the use of telemedicine between patients and corporate telemedics who don’t have history or background commonly associated with a patient/physician relationship. Any physician will tell you that being able to help an ill patient who’s traveling and has a video phone app enabling them to see the patient is convenient and worthwhile. But to turn patients over to corporate telemedics who are vastly removed fromour state and who have never personally treated that patient causes concern. In the past several years, Louisiana has enacted legislation, rules, regulations, and policy to oversee telemedicine in the state. LSMS expects there will bemore in the future and will carefully consider each piece on its merits and how it impacts Louisiana physicians.
years. However, in today’s world, human oversight is still required. Robotic and AI-assisted surgery have been proven to be less invasive and can shorten a patient’s recovery time. Using this technology allows physicians to use tiny incisions while performing complex procedures with more precision, control, and exibility. What is major surgery can now also be minimally invasive. It’s a new horizon that physicians have embraced and medical schools have adjusted curriculums to focus on both in training and in ethics. Electronic Health/Medical Records (EHR/EMR) and, in particular, how that information is used and shared along with Health Information Exchanges (HIE) are the newest components of medical technology. Individually, an EHR/EMR stores patient information and data for a speci c physician on a speci c patient. These systems make a patient’s record immediately available and in “real-time” during a medical appointment with that physician and were created as a way to manage/reduce paper charts, billing, and scheduling. With the advent of electronic prescribing of medications, the transfer of speci c data one way became commonplace. With today’s advanced technology, the sharing of information is available which has the potential to allow primary care physicians and specialists to better coordinate care andmanage protocols on shared patients. Perhaps the greatest bene t will be in government-subsidized healthcare arenas. The potential of sharing health records means that a patient who visits an emergency department will have their record shared with their primary care physician eliminating the duplication of costly tests and procedures. In coming years, LSMS expects there to be legislation related to how to successfully and con dentially share this information among providers.
Robotics and other forms of arti cial intelligence (AI) in healthcare have made the biggest leap forward in recent
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