Originally Posted by Unregistered

Can I ask a very noob but genuine question? Hopefully some seniors gp can enlighten me. I have just started locuming for past 1 month. (Previously largely done hospital postings in GM and ed)

My question is regarding the billing system/mechanism in gpland and how a clinic earns their revenue.
I have read through this thread, and many have pointed out that it's way easier to earn money through simple urti/ge cases compared to chronics.
In my last 1-2 weeks of locum, most of the largest bill size I see are from chronic patients. For e.g
- for a patient with just htn/hld, on telmisartan 40mg om and atorvastatin 40mg on, the bill size can hit slightly under 200 dollars for 1 mths supply of meds. (Only realized Atorvastatin 40mg is close to 130 dollars for 1 mths. I am not sure if my clinic uses branded drug or what as I just keyed in the drug name, although I had to give 2x 20mg tab in this case- not sure if it affects price)
- another pt with dm with albuminuria and hld, on atorvastatin and forxiga and telmisartan, the bill size came to 600 dollars for 2 mths meds.

As their chronics reasonably well control, I can complete the consult in 7-8 min, only slightly longer than a simple urti/ge consult.
However for urti/ge consult, very hard to hit over 100 dollars. On average 20-40 dollars only for meds, maybe 50-60 if I push hard for abx)
I am not including consult price as many are contract patients (so consults often charged at a much lower price)

I am only locum la, so I don't really care about the revenue of the clinics, but I must say that chronic bill size can be 4-5x of an acute case, with only slightly more effort (just a few more minutes of tlc and nagging), so not sure why people say chronic not profitable?

This is after hsg whitelisted thing kicked in btw

Hence would like to hear more about the billing mechanism in gp land