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Report: Expensive care doesn't mean better care

Quality Improvement Monitor, April 11, 2008

Medicare pays many hospitals and doctors more than some of the most efficient healthcare organizations in the country, but gets worse outcomes from them, according to a new report from the Dartmouth Institute.

Medicare could save tens of billions of dollars each year if all hospitals mirrored the practice patterns of gold-standard healthcare systems such as the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
 “This report demonstrates the need to overhaul the ways we care for Americans with chronic illness,” Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in a press release. “The extent of variation in Medicare spending, and the evidence that more care does not result in better outcomes, should lead us to ask if some chronically ill Americans are getting more care than they or their families actually want or need.”
The new edition of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care: Tracking the Care of Patients with Severe Chronic Illness shows that institutions that give better care can do it at a lower cost because they don’t over treat patients. Caring for people with chronic disease now accounts for more than 75% of all healthcare spending.

For more information, click here www.dartmouthatlas.org/press/2008_Atlas_press_release.pdf

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