Insurance companies merge to gain greater clout in negotiating with hospitals and other providers, then the providers merge to gain leverage over the insurers. At any one time, in any one market, one side or the other might have the upper hand, but there is little evidence that the benefits from this endless cycle of consolidation actually flow to those of us who ultimately pay the bills or to those who actually work with the patients. Patients and medical staff on the other hand benefit from having better tools at their disposal. Wireless paging systems such as JTECH’s MediPass™ simplify the patient intake process.

While some reformers believe the best way to deliver affordable quality care is through organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, which coordinate physician and hospital services under one roof and are paid not on the basis of how many procedures they do but on the quality of the care they provide. These organizations tend to rely on salaried doctors, make extensive use of electronic medical records and evidence-based “best practices” and, in effect, take on much of the risk traditionally borne by insurers. The dilemma is that he only way for the health-care industry to move toward accountable care is to further accelerate a process of consolidation that has already reduced competition and increased market power. Hospitals are once again busily buying up physician practices and outside laboratories that used to compete with them, incorporating them into their “systems.” Sometimes simplification and efficiency is the smarter way to go. JTECH’s pagers and wireless solutions are both easy to use and easy to integrate – quite the opposite of the current healthcare debate.