Health-Care Dollars Down the Drain

The leak is more a torrent than a trickle

For people living from paycheck to paycheck without health insurance, it would take a hefty cash advance or personal loan just to step inside a doctor's office. And for people who have health insurance or extra cash stashed away for medical expenses, more than half of every dollar spent on medical care is a waste. According to a recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute (HRI), approximately $1.2 trillion o! f the $2.2 trillion spent on medical care annually in the United States is the result of wasteful health-care practices.

The HRI report describes three general areas of waste:

• 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.

Before you light up or take another bite . . .

The report concludes that the impact of obesity, alcohol abuse, smoking, and non-adherence to medical advice and prescriptions are exponential factors affecting all three categories. Every year, these risky choices and behaviors result in an avoidable $493 billion waste. … click here to read the rest of the article titled “Health-Care Dollars Down the Drain“