Healthcare cost/capita versus the health of a nation...

Hmmm...  I got to thinking after reading one of John Goodman's posts on the cost of Healthcare...
So....

Innovation costs money… We seem to have won that race and our cost/capita is a reflection of that reality. At the same time though, the innovations are immediately shared across the world. Now I know this is a rather generalized and seemingly unreasonable statement. If you take pharma out of the picture though, the CT machine used here is the same as the one used in Germany. The clinical practices and protocols innovated here get used in Australia.

Notwithstanding there are socio-economic differences to be taken into account. While we are criticized for our cost/capita being so much greater, relative to the health outcomes of other countries, there is never any rhetoric on the health in these other countries being bolstered by the spend in the US.

Just a thought…

Wait a minute....!!! That's all we're going to save?

Last week I spent a few days at the World Healthcare Congress just outside D.C..

Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center, located in Toledo and part of the Mercy Health and Catholic Health Partners organizations presented some very astounding outcomes they have experienced over the past two years.  In round numbers they reduced their length of stay from 5.2 to 3.8 days and at the same time reduced the operational costs to run their organization by a total of $48,000,000.  They were also able to claim a 75% reduction in preventable harm to their patient population.

I told you so....

Well it has been a while since my last post... Funny how your brain can go into processing mode while life challenges you to learn more and more...

At any rate, I find it interesting that the tested and true concept of supply and demand continues to play out in the healthcare market place.  If you recall one of my older posts discussing the repercussions of adding millions to the medicare population (demand) while at the same time not increasing the number of doctors (supply) the outcome is destined to be lower quality care...