Spouse of a medical practice manager at a mid-sized practice here. Provider data is wildly variable in quality, to be sure. But if the insurance companies are

Spouse of a medical practice manager at a mid-sized practice here. Provider data is wildly variable in quality, to be sure. But if the insurance companies are trying to clean the data, they're not using the 'result' to make the system more efficient (except maybe for them at the expense of everyone else), because "we get bad data" gives them another reason to deny the claim. My wife and all of her peers spend inordinate amounts of their time responding to valid insurance denials, quoting chapter and verse of IDC10. Some insurers are so notorious (as in 'deny every claim up front...make them work for it hoping they'll give up') my wife drafts the response to the denial along with the initial request, because she knows it's automatically coming. This makes the automation possibilities that electronic patient management systems offer less effective, because to get paid the practitioner still has to manually intercede in way too many claims. Another bit of collateral damage is the increasing number of providers who no longer take insurance of any kind and put the onus on the patient to file (and fight) with the insurance companies.