For Employers
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Why Choosing Wisely® Matters
The Institute of Medicine’s report, “Best Care at a Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America,” estimates that up to $750 billion of health care spending is wasted on things like:
• unnecessary services;
• inefficiently delivered care;
• excess administrative costs;
• inflated prices;
• missed prevention opportunities;
• fraud, and
• other services that may not improve people’s health (or even cause harm).
Over the past decade, health care costs have skyrocketed. If other prices had grown as quickly as health care costs since 1945, today a gallon of milk would cost $481. If the current trend continues, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predict that U.S. health care spending will reach $4.3 trillion, increasing from 17.3 to 19.3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product by 2019.
The Choosing Wisely Employer implementation tools help employers:
• Promote wise choices to improve health care outcomes;
• Provide patient-centered care, and
• Improve the quality and safety of health care.
Employers have access to no-cost, ready-to-use tools they can share with their employees to teach them how to ask more questions, assess the pros and cons of treatments, and understand doctor recommendations. Click here to learn more.
1 IOM, The Cost of Health Care: How much is waste? February 2011