[Gnumed-devel] Re: Wishlist - Gnucash

[Yudhvir Singh Sidhu]

Along the same lines of an interface with Gnucash. Billing in the USA takes 
up a chunk of a practice's resources. How will a generic solution satisfy 
all? Do basic accounting functions belong in the Gnumed suite since they 
are very well done in Gnucash? Perhaps we can provide a higher level 
interface... as Syan suggests. Maybe we can even take on billing.

Having seen one other automated and integrated medical info system, and 
heard what some MDs have to say about it. It has two main themes driving 
it:
a.  Decision support. Scripts implements medical decisions. If you don't 
know what I am talking about, I will elaborate because this is a subject 
which can have a lot of discussion.
b.  Accounting. For the main purpose of saving money. That is how us 
Americans think.

It would be awesome to implement Activity Based Cost (ABC) accounting. That 
way each medical activity - and the "activity" can be defined to an 
treatment encounter or something smaller like an office visit or a phone 
call - can be costed. Why is this important? Due to reduced insurance 
payments, private practices have begun to refuse less lucrative procedures - 
which pushes these procedures to HMOs. People without insurance are 
showing up at emergency rooms in hospitals and legally, they have to be 
treated even if they cannot pay.

I am being long-winded here. But I can see why redoing and keeping up with 
the likes of Gnucash will be  a waste of our energies.

Yudhvir
=========

Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 00:29:31 +1100
From: syan tan <address@hidden>
Subject: [Gnumed-devel] re wishlist
To: address@hidden
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
what do the commercial practice management software do? which features 
would be used a lot ( basic /essential).
Should there be a way of generalizing localized conditions  : e.g.  is  
everywhere  billed by consultation  complexity/duration
categorization ? How do various countrys'  billing systems differ ( enough 
that a common framework can't be done) ?
Could an export interface be done to a GNU accounting system such as 
Gnucash , (? Open Office worksheets) ?


Yudhvir Singh Sidhu