The cost of health care and health insurance are top of mind as Congress shapes its new health care law and proposes getting rid of the current Affordable Care Act.
While the cost of health insurance is dominating conversations on Capitol Hill and in the headlines, the cost of health care is also something many want to address. One aspect of the high cost of medical care not as openly talked about is the high cost of wasted, unused medical supplies.
ProPublica launched a new series looking at the issue of the cost of wasted, new, medical supplies, and its article finds the cost significant.
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"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…The annual waste, the report estimated, could have paid for the insurance coverage of 150 million American workers — both the employer and employee contributions," wrote Marshall Allen.
This cost is important, because more than wanting affordable health insurance, most Americans want the cost of health care to go down. The Kaiser Family Foundation published a study in January, surveying more than 1,200 nationally representative respondents. The poll found more people want lower prescription costs and lower individual health care costs before they wanted Congress to repeal the ACA.
The practice of throwing away unused medical supplies is common around the country and has been happening for years. In 2014, researchers at Johns Hopkins studied the issue as well and estimated back then the cost of new medical supplies that were thrown away totaled around $15 million.
In that study, researchers explain why the practice is so common:
"The staggering waste of surgical supplies is rooted in the common practice of bundling surgical materials in ways that streamline operating room readiness and efficiency, but once opened, everything in the bundle that is unused is thrown away."
Most hospitals that throw away brand new supplies do not bill the cost of those materials to the patient. But as ProPublica reports, it does add to overall health care costs:
"Health care finance experts say while patients might not see the cost in their bills, the wasted supplies boost a hospital's overhead, which in turn makes everyone's costs higher."
There are some efforts to use these brand new supplies once hospitals throw them away. ProPublica profiles one nonprofit in Maine that collects unused, discarded medical supplies and sends them to poorer countries, when it has money for shipping.
The article also quotes an executive with the National Rural Health Association in Kansas, who says hospitals in small towns would gladly accept a bigger hospital's discarded, unused medical supplies, because they're very expensive to order new.
And some hospitals are trying to recognize and address their own wasteful practices. A group of researchers studied 58 neurosurgeries at University of California, San Francisco health center, and recorded how much waste came out of each surgery. The average was about $1,000 per surgery, which for one surgeon over the course of the year, could total tens of thousands of dollars.
KQED, San Francisco's NPR affiliate, wrote about the study's findings, and what doctors involved in the study suggest to curb waste in operating rooms:
"The researchers also recommend price transparency for surgeons. A 'feedback system,' Dr. Michael Lawton, a neurosurgeon at UCSF and one of the study's authors explained, would allow them to compare where they stand relative to their peers in terms of cost per procedure. While not available yet, such a system could encourage better management of operating room supplies, he said."
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