Investment in a healthcare incentive, decision-making and cost-effectiveness program could save the United States $368 billion over 10 years, a new report contends. Combined with other healthcare efficiency initiatives, total savings of more than $1.5 trillion could be achieved.
The Commonwealth Fund-supported study, titled Bending the Curve: Options for Achieving Savings and Improving Value in Health Spending, looks at policies for healthcare IT and healthcare efficiency, clinical decision-making, public health programs and initiatives, and financial incentives such as pay for performance.
Among the examples given for generating healthcare savings is the establishment of a "Center for Medical Effectiveness and Health Care Decision-Making." Such a center would focus on improving healthcare financial decision-making by incorporating information about relative clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness into an insurance benefit design.
Additionally, such a center would establish incentives for providers, payers and consumers to use efficiency information. An estimated $368 billion could be saved by all payers over 10 years, the report says.
"If we continue down this path of escalating costs and eroding health insurance coverage, we will pay an enormous human and economic price," said Glenn Hackbarth, a member of the Commonwealth Fund's Commission on a High Performance Health System, which authored the report with consulting from the Lewin Group.
The Commonwealth Fund estimates that healthcare expenditures will reach $4.4 trillion by 2017 if efforts to increase efficiency and reduce waste are not made.
"The report illustrates there are policy solutions out there that will save money, and ensure that Americans get improved value for their healthcare dollars, but we need to start now," said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis.
Other methods for achieving healthcare savings listed in the report include increasing investment in healthcare IT, which could generate savings of $88 billion; promoting smoking cessation and levying additional tobacco taxes, saving $191 billion; and improving primary care and coordination with a medical home model, saving an estimated $194 billion.