Health-care waste
NEHI, a Cambridge-based independent national non-profit working on health care innovation, published a three-part plan for reducing health-care waste, or cutting wasteful medical spending by $84 billion a year nationwide, attacking emergency department overuse, unnecessary hospital readmissions and medication errors.
Doctors and patients talking cost
Dr. Leslie Ramirez of leslieslist.org writes on Kevinmd.com:
“Why don’t patients and their doctors talk about healthcare costs?
“Choose the best answer:
A. The doctor doesn’t bring it up.
B. Patients are too embarrassed to say cost is a concern.
C. Patients assume docs can’t do anything to address the cost.
D. Doctors don’t have sufficient knowledge to discuss costs.
E. All of the above
Dennis Grace writes on the same blog:
“Knowledge of the cost of care is becoming an important component of bedside manner. Most anyone over forty has had the experience of a doctor cheerfully prescribing a drug that would cost fifteen dollars a day or blithely ordering a test that costs as much as a used car. Until 1998, apparently, doctors just weren’t taught to take costs into consideration. Before that time, doctors who did know about the costs were real go-getters.” More
