Thoughts On “Hospitals Find Way to Make Care Cheaper”
David:
I’ve done this kind of work for a living. Please ignore the comments.
They DO have much of the information, and many of them DO drive quality. For their HMO products, they need to demonstrate quality improvement to get HEDIS accreditation from NCQA. Many have reimbursement schemes that provide bonuses for physicians who perform well on a laundry list of quality metrics.
Unfortunately the basic premise of the article is wrong. Trust me – if OVERALL quality saved money, the 3rd party payers would be all over this. There are specific cases with hospital care where quality can lower cost. A few diseases (such as asthma and diabetes) which have immediate negative consequences when care lapses are opportunities for cost savings when communication process quality improves. But on the net, this quality activity is cost neutral at best, and a drain on the system at worst. For example it’s cheaper to tell people to stop taking their antihypertensives and statins over many years, and let the system absorb the occasional heart attack. If the Feds take over, they’ll soon learn that smokers die 7 years earlier and save the system lots of money in social security and Medicare expenses.
Furthermore… doing the right thing and having people live longer means they live long enough to get some new God-awful disease. At the end of the day, you can’t avoid death and taxes.
Quality should never be about saving money, although it’s nice when it does. It should be about doing the right thing for the member and providing value for their insurance premiums.
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