A Health Affairs study just projected national health care spending will grow an average of Lower the Number of Medical Tests for Patients.
Table of contents
- What can I do to prevent this in the future?
- Technology: The Cure for Rising Healthcare Costs? - MIT Technology Review
- Can alternative medicine lower costs?
- Integrative Medicine – A Powerful Tool for Employee Healthcare Cost Containment
Our findings suggest that any attempt to reduce national health care spending by eliminating coverage for complementary and alternative medicine would have little impact at best. Should some forms of complementary and alternative medicine—for example, chiropractic care for back pain—be proven more efficient than allopathic and specialty medicine, the inclusion of complementary and alternative medicine providers in new delivery systems such as accountable care organizations could help slow growth in national health care spending.
Health care spending growth in the United States continues to be a national concern, despite having slowed somewhat in recent years. One approach to reducing health care spending is to restructure benefits so as to reduce access to particular health care services. However, to avoid potential unintended consequences, such a strategy must be informed by knowledge of current health care spending. Complementary and alternative medicine has been immensely popular in the United States since the s and is used regularly by more than one-third of adult Americans.
Largely because of their popularity among the public, some complementary and alternative medicine services are now offered as benefits in state Medicaid programs, Medicare, and private health insurance plans. However, very little is known about US spending patterns on complementary and alternative medicine services. Recent efforts to estimate the extent to which these services are used have focused on utilization, such as visits for such services, rather than on spending patterns and have altogether neglected payments by third-party payers.
In many ways the complementary and alternative medicine market is an amalgam of the conventional health care sector and a free-market economy—generally under less governmental influence and with a higher proportion of costs paid out of pocket than is the case in the market for conventional allopathic medicine. Therefore, we sought to examine recent trends in expenditures on complementary and alternative medicine, with two goals in mind.
The first was to define the size of the complementary and alternative medicine market, so that health policy makers could better understand the potential effect of further limiting reimbursement for such services. The second was to determine whether this more cash-based health care market is exhibiting signs of market maturity—the point where demand for services, as indicated by the price consumers are willing to spend—is balanced with the supply of services.
- Integrative Medicine as a Cost Containment Tool in Healthcare!
- Kamtschatka: Zu Fuß durch Rußlands große Wildnis (German Edition).
- Per pietà, bell idol mio, aria, K73b (K78) - Full Score;
To obtain information on complementary and alternative medicine services use and spending in the United States, we analyzed data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey from to It is a validated source of nationally representative health care information and is frequently used to make national estimates of health care use and spending, health status, and visits to health care providers.
We analyzed data from all adult participants age eighteen or older in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey from to We chose this survey because it is the only ongoing source of data on US complementary and alternative medicine expenditures, and we chose this time period because the survey consistently collected information on such services during those years.
Total survey sample sizes in our time frame ranged from a low of 29, subjects in to a high of 37, in Response rates ranged from 57 percent in to 65 percent in At each interview, survey participants were asked if they had seen a health care provider in the past six months and, if so, what type of provider they visited, how many visits were made, and how much was spent on the service.
To acquire information on the total number of annual ambulatory visits and expenditures on complementary and alternative medicine provider services, we combined office-based and outpatient events. To determine the relative amount spent on complementary and alternative medicine services over time, we calculated the fraction of total national ambulatory health care expenditures and total national health care expenditures accounted for by these services.
We converted all health care spending data to dollars using the Consumer Price Index for professional medical services. We examined the significance for the coefficient for year as a categorical variable. For our linear regressions on inflation-adjusted expenditures per user, we transformed complementary and alternative medicine expenditures into a logarithmic scale. We used complex survey design methods to generate all descriptive analyses of the data sets, using Stata statistical software, version We separately examined trends for acupuncture, chiropractic care, massage therapy, and other complementary and alternative medicine—which included health care provided by homeopaths, naturopathic physicians, herbalists, and all other complementary and alternative medicine professionals—for all analyses.
This study had several limitations. First, it examined use and spending trends for only the most common complementary and alternative medicine services in the adult, civilian, noninstitutionalized US population. Trends may differ for other forms of complementary and alternative medicine or in the population segments not included—that is, children, institutionalized Americans such as nursing home residents, and members of the military. Second, because our study used a serial cross-sectional design, any potential differences in data collection by the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey during the period of time examined could have affected our findings.
However, we are unaware of any changes that occurred during the period —08 in regard to data on complementary and alternative medicine.
Third, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey collects data on use and spending according to the credentials of the provider. Therefore, our analyses were restricted to credentialed complementary and alternative medicine professionals such as chiropractors, who must hold both a doctor of chiropractic degree and a state license and excluded any complementary and alternative medicine services offered by practitioners without professional credentials. Noncredentialed complementary and alternative medicine professionals include providers with informal training—that is, those who did not graduate from an accredited training program or do not hold active state licensure—in such fields as herbal medicine and homeopathy.
What can I do to prevent this in the future?
Inflation-adjusted expenditures on acupuncture, massage therapy, and other complementary and alternative medicine services were stable. Other complementary and alternative medicine CAM includes homeopathy, naturopathy, and herbal medicine. Expenditures on complementary and alternative medicine services constituted a small fraction of national health care expenditures.
National expenditures on these services fluctuated between 2.
- The River Beach.
- Study Data And Methods.
- Why do I have to complete a CAPTCHA?.
After adjustment for age, sex, and health insurance status, all changes in expenditures were insignificant except for the increase in expenditures on chiropractic care Exhibit 2 and Appendix Table 1. Expenditures are dollars, adjusted for inflation. The number of adults who visited any complementary and alternative medicine provider at least once during the year increased by 6 percent, from Looking at specific services, the number of users was relatively stable except in one case: Users of acupuncture grew by 16 percent, from , in to 1. Despite a slight increase in expenditures on complementary and alternative medicine services between and , the total number of ambulatory visits to complementary and alternative medicine providers decreased by 3 percent, from million to million Exhibit 4.
Technology: The Cure for Rising Healthcare Costs? - MIT Technology Review
The highest number of ambulatory visits, million, occurred in The number of these visits declined by 15 percent between and , with the largest decrease from to Chiropractic care was the predominant type of complementary and alternative medicine service used by US adults Exhibit 4. Chiropractic care accounted for 77—82 percent of total ambulatory visits to complementary and alternative medicine providers from to , while massage therapy accounted for 10—14 percent; acupuncture, 4—6 percent; and other services, 3—4 percent. Among specific complementary and alternative medicine services, the number of national visits for acupuncture decreased by 16 percent from 6.
The number of visits for massage therapy was relatively stable, and the number of visits increased slightly for other complementary and alternative medicine services. In linear regression models adjusted for age, sex, and health insurance status, there was a significant decrease in the mean number of visits for acupuncture per user Exhibit 2. We used data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to examine trends in use of and expenditures on complementary and alternative medicine services between and in the United States.
We found that the US market for these services represented only a small part of national health care spending. We also found surprisingly little growth in spending on complementary and alternative medicine services and a 15 percent decrease in the total number of visits to complementary and alternative medicine providers between and You may end up with some significant savings. Websites like Healthcare Bluebook can also be helpful when trying to find the best healthcare prices.
Has your doctor recommended an MRI or a lab test? Before you trek down to the suggested facility, call a few other testing sites to see what they would charge you for the procedure. If you take prescription drugs on a regular basis, such as birth control or cholesterol drugs, find out if your health insurance offers a mail-order option. According to the Medical Billing Advocates of America , about 80 percent of medical bills contain errors.
A high-deductible health plan requires you to pay a higher out-of-pocket deductible before your insurance coverage kicks in. However, monthly premiums are usually much lower than traditional health plans, and if you only see your doctor once or twice a year, you may save money with this option. Just make sure you have the cash on hand to cover the deductible if you do end up needing significant care.
Can alternative medicine lower costs?
A flexible spending account FSA allows you to put aside pretax dollars that you can use toward medical expenses throughout the year. If your employer offers an FSA and your healthcare costs are fairly predictable, you should take advantage of it. A Monthly and yearly look at one man's medical bills. There are many pros and cons of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Although it has helped many people obtain insurance, opponents argue that the…. In healthcare, this challenge is compounded by the possibility that the savings could be passed to another healthcare provider or payer if the patient moves to another geographic region or changes their health insurer.
Integrative Medicine – A Powerful Tool for Employee Healthcare Cost Containment
So how can medtech companies navigate this complicated market dynamic? Adapting to the new market realities is critical. For a start, patient outcomes and health economics need to be considered at a much earlier stage, and each opportunity may need to take into account quite different variables. One example would be insulin delivery for diabetes patients: Now back to the technology and some examples of areas that we think are of particular interest. Because we passionately believe that science and technology are key enablers in finding new ways to reduce costs and increase the efficiency and quality of care, we spend a lot of time keeping an eye on what is out there.
A new generation of battery-powered tools that use ultrasonic, radiofrequency, laser, or light energy is enabling a whole new range of minimally invasive surgical procedures. This has become a reality due to advances in low-power electronics, electronics miniaturization, and battery energy density. These smaller, self-powered instruments not only are less invasive but also have potential to improve infection control and patient outcomes. In some cases, this means procedures can be done in a clinic rather than a hospital.
So, while the actual initial instrument cost might be higher, the lifetime costs can be lower, and these instruments reduce not only the time that patients spend in hospital but also, in some cases, the postoperative treatments that are required. Diagnosis and pathology are changing. In the past, to make a diagnosis, a clinician might have conducted a biopsy—an invasive and time-consuming procedure that can require multiple appointments. Optical coherence tomography OCT is a three-dimensional imaging system similar to ultrasound that uses light instead of sound to see below the surface of tissue in great detail.
Until now, OCT has primarily been used in ophthalmology to detect abnormalities beneath the surface of the retina. However, with developments in laser technology, light sources, miniature actuators, and processing power, OCT is ripe for use in other applications, such as in the imaging of vascular disease or cancer detection. Advances in processing power are also negating the need for invasive endoscopies and colonoscopies. CT- or MRI-based virtual colonoscopies provide a more comfortable, patient-friendly alternative for early detection of colon cancer.
But the important enablers, aside from smart phones and tablets, are smart sensing technologies, low-power connectivity, and developments in user interfaces, storage, data processing, and analytics. These connected health technologies could help reduce healthcare costs by improving patient compliance and reducing office visits.
Here are two examples:.