$1.2 Trillion Is Wasted In The US Healthcare System Every Year!
Posted on Mon, Aug 31, 2009
The amount of wastage in the healthcare industry is staggering, amounting to over $1.2 Trillion! The findings are the results of studies done by the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, who broke down exactly where so much of this overspending in the healthcare industry goes.
An astonishing $493 billion in healthcare waste is due to individuals engaging in poor lifestyle habits like smoking, alcoholism and being obese. Two of the other biggest money wasters are the performance of unnecessary tests and inefficiencies in claims processing, both of which cost $210 billion yearly. Patients who are sent home too early cost $25 billion, while other medical mistakes cost $17 billion. $21 billion comes from turnover of staff. Those who go to the ER for non-urgent care instead of to a primary care physician cost another $14 billion. People who get infections as a result of their hospital stays tally $3 billion. Prescription issues and errors account for another $5 billion. This totals over half of any given year’s spending on healthcare.
The U.S. government has been called to seriously address six of these areas in its proposed healthcare reform. These areas are ones in which government involvement could actually effect change. They include excessive wasteful medical testing, the claims processing procedure, the abuse of ER services, medical mistakes, early release of hospitalized patients and the cost of infections caught during hospitalizations. Despite the fact that groups are calling on the government to work on these issues, the probability is that it will take years before change is actually seen.