More lessons from my sojourn among the medical students…
As they gather more data, the insurance companies are getting smarter every year about kicking incompetent providers out of their networks. Eventually your private insurance company’s network will include only doctors with reasonably low rates of complications.
What about the doctors who are no longer in any private insurance company’s network. The good news for them is that Medicare/Medicaid can’t kick out anyone. They pay anyone who is licensed and legal to treat patients. When they do work with private insurers they make them sign contracts forbidding them from steering patients away from bad providers.
Big Data will thus inevitably create doctors, hospitals, etc. who see only Medicare/Medicaid patients? And these will be the worst providers in the U.S.?