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US HealthCare
US HealthCare
CURRENT SCENARIO IN US HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
- "The US healthcare system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year" - Robert Kelley, vice president of healthcare analytics at Thomson Reuters
- "The bad news is that an estimated $700 billion is wasted annually. That's one-third of the nation's healthcare bill. The good news is that by attacking waste we can reduce healthcare costs without adversely affecting the quality of care or access to care." Kelley said in a statement.
- One example -- a paper-based system that discourages sharing of medical records accounts for 6 per cent of annual overspending.
Key findings from Market Research:
- Unnecessary care such as the overuse of antibiotics and lab tests to protect against malpractice exposure makes up 37 per cent of healthcare waste or $200 to $300 a year
- Fraud makes up 22 per cent of healthcare waste, or up to $200 billion a year in fraudulent Medicare claims, kickbacks for referrals for unnecessary services and other scams
- Administrative inefficiency and redundant paperwork account for 18 per cent of healthcare waste. -- "American physicians spend nearly eight hours per week on paperwork and employ 1.66 clerical workers per doctor, far more than in Canada," - 2003 New England Journal of Medicine paper by Harvard University researcher Dr. Steffie Woolhandler.
- Medical mistakes account for $50 billion to $100 billion in unnecessary spending each year, or 11 per cent of the total.
- Preventable conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes cost $30 billion to $50 billion a year.
- The average US hospital spends one-quarter of its budget on billing and administration, nearly twice the average in Canada,
All this could help explain why Americans spend more per capita and the highest percentage of GDP on healthcare than any other OECD country, yet has an unhealthier population with more diabetes, obesity and heart disease and higher rates of neonatal births than other developed nations. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said on Sunday that Senate Democratic leaders are close to securing enough votes to pass legislation to start reform of the country's $2.5 trillion healthcare system.