concept: whence the savings?

How is SacDoc able to deliver humane quality care to patients for a fraction of the cost of delivering marginal care under the current system? SacDoc is an information technology package that allows programs to focus on physician productivity to provide the medical aspects of mental health care as efficiently as possible. Since doctor time is frequently the biggest line item in any community mental health program that offers psychiatric services, focusing attention on the medical piece makes sense when trying to improve cost-effectiveness.

• SacDoc, as a documentation support tool, improves physicians' productivity by eliminating time spent obtaining, reviewing, organizing, a filing paper-based charts.
• SacDoc, as a decision support tool, gives doctors access to a collection of decision support materials that's as big as the internet. Since a SacDoc physician is already sitting in front of an internet-enabled computer, she can use the links provided within SacDoc or choose her own tools for medication references, treatment protocols, and patient education materials. No more searching a library of reference books, no more requesting copies of relevant journal articles by mail or searching through a paper file, no more pawing through a rack of patient support materials or authorization forms. Doctors can do exactly what they love (and are paid for!): doctoring.
• SacDoc, as a scheduling tool, frees both doctors and patients from the tyranny of the schedule and the waiting room. With same day appointments, doctors' productivity can finally reach 100%, and they'll be seeing patients in a timely fashion without having forced them to wait months for a scheduled appointment or hours on standby.
• With same day appointments, patients and doctors can finally be freed of the frustration of telephones. Telephone calls and phone tag are a major cause of lost physician productivity and patient frustration. Same day appointments eliminate the need for phone tag -- patients can get their urgent questions answered face-to-face, the way medicine should be delivered.
• SacDoc, as a concept, frees physicians from the unbelievable burden of providing accounting and clerical services imposed by the current system.
  • Completing a new patient intake under the current system, if all requirements are met, requires the physician herself to produce and average of twenty three pages of paperwork! Of those twenty three pages, only about two or three pages represent the kind of information a private-sector physician would record.
  • In addition to the paperwork burdens, existing County program spend countless hours of clerical and "service coordinator" time completing reports and helping patients fill out endless forms -- many written at a college or postgraduate level.
  • SacDoc technology makes it possible to completely separate the costs of actually providing psychiatric and medical care from administrative costs. A program using SacDoc technology can provide psychiatric services (brief psychotherapy and medication management) that meets or exceeds current community standards of care for a fraction of the cost. A SacDoc-based clinic would put an end to the current practice of hiding millions of dollars of wasteful administrative overhead by calling it "health care costs."
  • In many community mental health programs, significant value is often added by non-medical personnel: social workers, service coordinators, psychologists, benefits specialists, advocates, and the like. SacDoc does not minimize the value of those services, but recognizes that providing medical services is costly and specialized enough to warrant separating it from a comprehensive community mental health plan. In smaller programs in Sacramento County, care coordinators have time to spend providing invaluable service to patients. In the RST system, however, coordinators have 150 or more patients each, and are able to do little more than keep up with administrative overhead.

In summary, savings come from focusing on delivering medical/psychiatric care, leveraging technology to maximize doctors' productivity and improve patients' experiences, and adding full accountability for administrative overhead.

Proceed to why the rush?