A recent study suggests that twenty percent of the over two trillion dollars spent annually in the United States on healthcare is being wasted. The authors, Dr. Donald Berwick (former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) and Andrew Hackbarth (policy analyst for the RAND Corporation), published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Six categories of waste were identified in the study: failures of care delivery; failures of care coordination; overtreatment; administrative complexity; pricing failures; and fraud and abuse. The authors state that “the actual total may be far greater” and urge a systematic, comprehensive, and cooperative pursuit of waste reduction which could result in savings higher than those achieved by cuts in care and coverage. Suggested remedies include adopting known best care processes, reducing excessive use of antibiotics, and simplifying billing procedures, among others.
Effective use of an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system like Medisoft Clinical, Lytec MD, or Allscripts MyWay can result in better patient care and reduce the overtreatment and care delivery failure described in the JAMA article. Microwize Technology is committed to empowering physicians with innovative technology and solutions that improve quality of life, reduce the cost of healthcare, deliver superior patient care, and provide employees with meaningful work and growth opportunities.