Medical waste estimates.Unbelievable even if only half true!

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a Big Four auditor, alongside KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. In other words, PWC are major bean counters(accountants), not exactly folks to make radical statements.

Yet they estimate that more than half of all healthcare expenditures are wasteful. And that "more than half" is a whole lot of money: 1.2 Trillion dollars.

This is so big that it is easy to just glance over a figure like that without it making an impact but for example, less than 1/4 that amount could renovate all of the water infrastructures in the entire US of A.

So where is the wasteful spending going:

1. unnecessary tests and procedures.

2. inefficient administration

3. treatment of diseases better treated through lifestyle modifications, i.e. weight control, stop smoking, better nutrition, drug and alcohol programs.



Here are some excerpts from the PriceWaterhouseCooper site: You can download the complete report if you want all the nittygritty -Duncan

As part of its preparation for the 180° Health Forum, PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute (HRI) interviewed more than 20 participants, reviewed more than 35 studies about waste and inefficiency in healthcare and surveyed 1,000 consumers to understand the public's perception of waste and inefficiency in the system. From that research came The price of excess:

Identifying waste in healthcare spending.

Key Findings

Our research found that wasteful spending in the health system has been calculated at up to $1.2 trillion of the $2.2 trillion spent in the United States, more than half of all health spending. Defensive medicine, such as redundant, inappropriate or unnecessary tests and procedures, was identified as the biggest area of excess, followed by inefficient healthcare administration and the cost of care necessitated by conditions such as obesity, which can be considered preventable by lifestyle changes. PricewaterhouseCoopers' paper classified health system inefficiencies into three "wastebaskets" that are driving up costs:

* Behavioral where individual behaviors are shown to lead to health problems, and have potential opportunities for earlier, non-medical interventions.
* Clinical where medical care itself is considered inappropriate, entailing overuse, misuse or under-use of particular interventions, missed opportunities for earlier interventions, and overt errors leading to quality problems for the patient, plus cost and rework.
* Operational where administrative or other business processes appear to add costs without creating value.

When added together, the opportunities for eliminating wasteful spending add up to as much as $1.2 trillion. The impact of issues such as non-adherence to medical advice and prescriptions, alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity are exponential, and fall into all three baskets.

link to PWC
http://tinyurl.com/64lcfg