Why American Healthcare is Ready for Blockchain

I have worked with our healthcare system for over twenty years. In this time I have seen many things — but one thing I have not seen is healthcare costs go down for Americans. There are many, many reasons that our healthcare system does not operate as an efficient market for consumers of healthcare. Some favorite targets are drug manufacturers, vertically integrated healthcare systems, for-profit insurers, and the expansion of Medicaid markets.

What is rarely discussed though is the process by which our doctors are paid for their services. This process is completely opaque to patients (unless we begin to questions the expense of services…which would take longer than a blog to explain), but the process adds over $59 billion dollars of expense a year. This expenses goes into the overhead for providers of healthcare, the insurers, and a slew of intermediaries which often exist between your doctor giving you a checkup, and your doctor getting paid.

Many states in America are under significant budget pressure due to increasing healthcare expenses.

Imagine what a $1 billion dollar expense does to your state’s budget.

This is money that would normally go to educating our children, providing mental health services, and investing in the infrastructure of our states that enable business and our personal leisure.

Why is blockhain the right solution? Why is it the right time? Our country appears deadlocked on the idea of healthcare as a right, and there is no certainty that progress in any direction will occur soon. Addressing the administrative expense of our system is one way to reduce costs that Americans of all political leanings can endorse. We can not afford, literally and figuratively, to not attempt to address this issue.

Creating an efficient system between healthcare entities has been attempted in the near past. The Affordable Care Act incentivized organizations to adopt Electronic Health Records (EHR), yet nearly ten years later we are nowhere close to bridging this patient data between providers. Why? The biggest culprit is centralization. All traditional software solutions require a party to be the central authority for this data. This is data that can be extremely valuable if aggregated by one party. This is a driving reason why we have fractured EHR interoperability standards, and no real effective Health Information Exchanges.

Blockchain technology inherently addresses the problem of centralization. It allows all stakeholders to share common information platforms without fear that competitors will control, utilize, and act on their data.

A blockchain platform that drives down this $59 billion dollar expense, maintained by a non profit that does not provide any healthcare services, is the best way to impact American healthcare today. This is the mission of the Veris Foundation.