In a recent study, researchers asked a slew of physicians and administrators in private practices within the United States and Canada “how much time they spent each day with insurers and other third-party payers, tracking down information for claims that were denied or incorrectly paid, resolving questions about insurance coverage for prescription drugs or diagnostic tests, and filing the different forms required by each and every insurance company, according to an article in “The New York Times.”

The article continued to explain that “those who practiced physician services in Canada, where health care is administered mainly by the government, did spend a good deal of time and money communicating with their payers. But American doctors in the study spent far more dealing with multiple health plans: more than $80,000 per year per physician, or roughly four times as much as their northern counterparts. And their offices spent as many as 21 hours per week with payers, nearly 10 times as much as the Canadian offices.”

“The amount of time we spend on this is just crazy,” said Dr. Sara L. Star, a suburban Chicago-based patient care provider. “But each insurance company has its own language, its own set of rules and specific contracts with certain laboratories, hospitals, physicians and pharmaceutical companies.”

Authors of the study suggest simplifying procedures as well as the forms that add to costs without improving quality.

“There are rules that really save money or improve patient care that health plans won’t want to change,” said Sean Nicholson, one of the study authors and an economist in the department of policy analysis and management at Cornell University. “But there are also a lot of things that don’t matter that they could and should standardize.”