Link to the full article: ProPublica: What Hospitals Waste
Talk to experts and many agree that waste would be a good place to start. In 2012 the National Academy of Medicine estimated the U.S. health care system squandered $765 billion a year, more than the entire budget of the Defense Department. Dr. Mark Smith, who chaired the committee that authored the report, said the waste is “crowding out” spending on critical infrastructure needs, like better roads and public transportation. The annual waste, the report estimated, could have paid for the insurance coverage of 150 million American workers — both the employer and employee contributions.
UCSF reviewed all the preference cards for each surgeon, which specify how the operating room should be set up before each operation. The hospital now makes sure the set-up doesn’t include supplies that aren’t actually needed, preventing a significant amount of the waste.
In a separate study in the December edition of JAMA Surgery, Zygourakis and her colleagues showed each UCSF surgeon his or her direct costs per procedure in comparison to other surgeons in the institution. Most doctors were unaware of operating-room costs. Then they gave them an incentive: Their departments would get a bonus if they reduced costs by at least 5 percent.
The median surgical supply costs dropped by 6.5 percent in the group of surgeons who participated — a savings of about $836,000 over one year — while the control group’s costs increased by almost 7.5 percent.
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