Originally Published MDDI October
2004
NEWSTRENDS
Getting What We Pay For: the Value of Healthcare |
| We’ve
gotten more than we’ve spent out of out healthcare dollar. —Caroline Steinberg |
A coalition of seven leading healthcare groups is pressuring HHS to find a
way to measure the benefits of medical technology on society.
The coalition, called the Value Group, sent the request in a letter to HHS chief
Tommy Thompson on August 23, 2004. The group asked him to require a newly formed
task force to calculate how improvements in medical technology have affected
people’s health and their pocketbooks. At the same time, the Value Group
released a report titled, “The Value of Investment in Health Care: Better
Care, Better Lives,” which details the benefits of advances in healthcare
relative to cost.
“The main point of the study,” said Caroline Steinberg, vice president
of trends analysis for the American Hospital Association (AHA), “is that
if you look across the health indicators, we’ve gotten more than we’ve
spent out of our healthcare dollar.”
According to the report, during the past 20 years, each dollar spent on healthcare
has returned health gains of $2.30 to $2.80. These gains are reflected in a
three-year increase in life expectancy, a 25% decrease in the disability rate
for seniors, and the number of days spent in the hospital cut by more than half.
 |
| If
you intervene early, the outcome is better and the cost will be less. —Mary Grealy |
“What we’re finding is that people who can access [healthcare] can
be preventive about their health—they stay out of the emergency room,”
says Mary Grealy, president of the Healthcare Leadership Council. “If you
can intervene early, the outcome is better and the cost will be less.”
The council wants to show that healthcare spending is not only a cost, but also
an investment that returns valuable dividends. “How can one evaluate whether
the nation’s healthcare is doing better or worse without evaluating its
benefits?” asks Blair Childs, vice president of AdvaMed.
“It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to look at how much I’m
spending on computers for my office, but I’m not going to look at whether
they’re faster or making us more efficient or productive.’ Every business
is looking at cost versus benefits. But in healthcare today, we only look at
one side of it.”
Childs says an “economic yardstick” to measure the progress of the
healthcare system might prompt society to reassess its views on direct patient
care and the related transaction and legal costs. People might be more supportive
of healthcare spending and initiatives if they knew its advantages, he says.
“What people don’t realize is that we’re getting an enormous
benefit for what we’re spending,” Childs says. The report, conducted
by Medtap International Inc. (Bethesda, MD), covers four areas in which
the healthcare benefits are greater than the initial investment.
Copyright ©2004
Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry
