WHAT REALLY STANDS IN THE WAY OF CUTTING HEALTH CARE COSTS
(Part 2 out of 2)

by Ngan MacDonald and Walter Linde-Zwirble 

When forced to choose between abstract evidence and experience, many physicians tend to rely on experience. This keeps health care costs high, write consultants Ngan MacDonald and Walter Linde-Zwirble in this opinion piece

Preventing Re-hospitalization

Take the problem of re-hospitalization. The ability to predict who is genuinely at risk for re-hospitalization could enable health care providers to follow up closely with those patients – and only those patients. By avoiding expensive re-admissions, we can save as much as 15% in health care costs, as we found in a recent study we conducted.

While outdated methods do capture the right patients, they also sweep up many more people who are actually at far lower risk. The result? Expensive treatments and tests are applied to vast populations of patients who, in fact, do not all need the same treatment. This also ignores factors that occur during a patient’s current hospital stay. But we now know that complications during surgery, duration of surgery, and type of anesthesia can significantly affect the likelihood that a patient will be re-hospitalized.

Physicians and hospitals who are willing to apply today’s highly sophisticated data-driven treatment in their practice have a historic opportunity. They can lead the way in controlling health care costs while providing better care.

If not health care providers, who? We urgently need to control health care costs, but we lack the political will to create national legislation or initiatives that would create standards and protocols for treatment based on advanced analytics. If the solution is going to be found, it’s going to have to start locally – with physicians and hospitals working together to create those standards.

But they will have to put aside their all-too-human distrust of analytics versus experience. They will have to do this by using the data from their own patients to build improved treatment protocols. They can then be confident that the right data went in — including the variables that can make apparently similar cases quite different.

For example, a number of oncologists collaborated with health outcomes researchers to understand how today’s analytics lead to better outcomes. The researchers combined diagnostics, patient and treatment information about the course of chemotherapy in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The outcomes data from clinical trials showed that use of a biologic drug could reduce complications in chemotherapy. That data was integrated with data about the physicians’ patients. The physicians were then able to identify patients who could benefit from supportive therapy with a biologic drug, resulting in fewer complications due to chemotherapy. And because the physicians experienced this in their actual practices, with their own patients and patient data, the gap between evidence and experience closed.

As more physicians and hospitals achieve such outcomes, consider the possibilities: Costs coming under control; insurers and pharmaceutical companies sharing their data with health care providers to further refine treatment standards; momentum building nationally to attack health care costs through better care. In fact, that may be the only way we can counter the lack of political will to take on the issue from the top and to overcome the biggest obstacle at the bottom — our biases about evidence.

Fuente: KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON

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(translator on page)

¿Cómo INCORPORAR y APLICAR Modelos de
PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO?
(aplicado al Sector Salud y Farma, con resolución de casos reales en tiempo real)

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

¿Cómo GERENCIAR EFICAZMENTE a partir del

MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO?

(aplicado al Sector Salud y Farma, con resolución de casos reales en tiempo real)

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

¿Cómo GERENCIAR PROCESOS DE CAMBIO

y no sufrir en el intento?

(aplicado al Sector Salud y Farma, con resolución de casos reales en tiempo real)

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

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Recetas para Escenarios Turbulentos

(aplicado al Sector Salud y Farma, con resolución de casos reales en tiempo real)

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

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