A Prescription To Reduce Waste In Health Care Spending

It's possible to reduce or eliminate some of the waste, but there are also formidable forces that benefit from it. Excess spending generates revenue and profit for what some have called the "medical industrial complex," said Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice. "There are a number of people who can imagine ways to solve things," Welch said of the wasted spending. "But the political will and the forces at work can stop them pretty easily."

 America’s System for Providing People Basic Necessities Is Embarrassingly Wasteful

The United States spends a nauseating amount of money on medical care and doesn’t get much to show for it, at least if you judge by our middling health outcomes compared with the rest of the developed world.

 Epidemic Of Health Care Waste: From $1,877 Ear Piercing To ICU Overuse

Wasteful use of medical care has "become so normalized that I don't think people in the system see it," said Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, a Boston think tank focused on making health care more effective, affordable and just. "We need more serious studies of what these practices are."

 How much money do we waste on useless health care?

One of the things that's so difficult about tackling wasteful care, is actually identifying the waste. At many appointments, doctors have difficulty knowing when treatment is needed - and when it won't provide help at all.

 Reducing the impact of waste on the health system

Despite global healthcare expenditure surpassing USD$8 trillion, countries have encountered significant challenges in reaching international health goals.1 Health systems experience resource scarcity and must operate with high efficiency to bring value to those who need it. Yet wasteful use of resources in healthcare accounts for significant amounts of spending. Tackling this waste would allow health systems to unlock resources for funding innovative and efficient interventions.

 The Great Big Medicare Rip-Off

The government is leaving billions of dollars on the table. Here’s how to fix it.

Are we spending too much on the dying? New research challenges this widely held view

Maybe you have heard the refrain before: The U.S. spends too much money on the dying. Every year, 5 percent of Medicare beneficiaries die, but one-quarter of spending occurs in the last year of life. Side by side, these stats have fed a widely held belief that, in an exorbitantly expensive health care system, much of end-of-life care goes to waste.

Discarded drugs: a wasteful and costly problem that requires whole-of-government approaches

Controlling the rising costs of pharmaceuticals, particularly those administered by physicians, has been a top health care priority for policymakers, with recent actions in both Congress and the executive branch. Reducing the waste from discarded drugs is a piece of the broader approach to drug affordability.

HHS OIG Admits: We’re Just Flushing Money Down the Drain

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) admitted last week that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) hospital payment process is broken.

How the U.S. Health-Care System Wastes $750 Billion Annually

Every year, the United States spends eight times as much money on unnecessary health-care costs as the Pentagon spent for each year of its operations in Iraq.

Reducing Waste in Health Care

A third or more of what the US spends annually may be wasteful. How much could be pared back—and how—is a key question.

Report: U.S. Wastes More Than Half of Health Spending

A lot of the waste is attributed to some favorite bugaboos of efficiency advocates, including ineffective use of information technology ($81-$88 billion), claims processing, ($21-$210 billion) and defensive medicine ($210 billion). Medical errors cost $17 billion and badly-managed diabetes is tied to $22 billion.

Tackling Wasteful Spending on Health

A significant share of health spending in OECD countries is at best ineffective and at worst, wasteful. Solutions exist.

The Huge Waste in the U.S. Health System

A study finds evidence for how to reduce some of it, but also a large blind spot on how to remove the rest.

Why Healthcare Waste Is A Major Problem In The United States

According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, an estimated $765 billion worth of medical supplies are wasted every year in the United States. This includes everything from unused medications to unneeded medical procedures.

Why It’s So Hard to Cut Waste in Health Care

Cutting waste while preserving critically important treatment is the holy grail of health care policy. The coronavirus pandemic has shown why that goal has been so stubbornly difficult to achieve.

Why we’re wasting money on medical tests and how behavioural insights can help

This is one of numerous areas of wasted health-care expenditure around the world. Studies in the US have reported that 20 to 25% of all healthcare delivered is either not needed, or harmful. The situation in Australia appears much the same. A conservative estimate of avoidable costs in Australia’s public hospital system is A$928 million. We can reduce some of this waste by looking at why doctors continue to order these tests and use behavioural techniques to change the situation.