Massachusetts Wins the Prize for Most Expensive Healthcare

1. “Significant trends are occurring in the provider and payer market. For providers, the delivery system is growing increasingly concentrated in several large systems, with a larger proportion of discharges occurring from major teaching hospitals and hospitals in their system.”

Partners and Caregroup, along with a couple of for-profits, have eaten up pretty much all the formerly-independent hospital systems and physician practices.  While this means they can negotiate more effectively with vendors, it does not mean that potential cost savings gets passed on to anybody below the CEOs.

2. “…many provider organizations seek to re-orient care delivery around patient-centered, accountable care models, though significant challenges such as misaligned payment incentives, persistent barriers to behavioral health integration, and limited data and resources remain.”

This is nice-speak for “A lot of groups are moving toward accountable care organizations, without any real evidence that care in this model is better or that it’s any cheaper.”

3. “In addition, public and commercial payers are increasingly developing alternative payment methods that aim to alter supply-side incentives. However, there are significant challenges in implementation, including wide variation in these types of contracts covering Massachusetts providers, both within and across payers, as budget levels, risk adjustments, and other terms are negotiated.”

Everybody has a different deal.  Everything can be negotiated.

4. “The operating expenses that hospitals incur for inpatient care differ by thousands of dollars per discharge, even after adjusting for regional wages and the complexity of care provided. Some hospitals deliver high-quality care with lower operating expenses, while many higher-expense hospitals achieve lower quality performance.  Operating expenses are driven in part by market dynamics. Hospitals that are able to negotiate high commercial rates have high operating expenses and cover losses they may experience on public payer business with income from their higher commercial revenue, while hospitals with more limited revenue must maintain lower expenses.”

Operating expenses make no sense.  There is no consistency.  Going to a big fancy hospital with a big fancy name does not mean the care you get will be better, but it will likely be more expensive because the fancy hospital also has things that make a lot of money, like imaging machines and advanced non-invasive procedures.

5. “An estimated 21 to 39 percent ($14.7 to $26.9 billion in 2012) of health care expenditures in Massachusetts could be considered wasteful.”

No translation needed.  I could give you a hundred examples of waste right now, but anecdotal evidence is not data.  Massachusetts HPC has the data.

6. “Persistently high-cost patients – those who remain high-cost over multiple years – are easier to identify for care improvement and better health outcomes. These patients represent 29 percent of high-cost patients and make up 15 to 20 percent of Medicare and commercial spending in Massachusetts. Interventions that have been shown to improve the efficiency of care for high-cost patients include: prevention of conditions that often lead to expensive health crises; process and operational improvements that reduce the cost of episodes that are common among high-cost patients; and care management resources to support patients to manage their care more effectively and better coordinate care for patients across multiple provider settings.”

We know who the highest cost patients are and if we had better ways of encouraging prevention, managing diseases so they don’t get out of hand, and helping people take care of themselves in the community, we’d spend less.  Maybe.

So there you go!  Maybe these things can be addressed, maybe they can’t.  In the meantime, save your pennies, Massachusetts residents.  You’re gonna need them.