Hospital treatment cost -v- mortality rate
June 27, 2012 Leave a comment
Welcome to the blog Mrs Price, a graph for you:
The Source is a paper based upon data collected over the past two centuries on mortality and costs incurred at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
Broadly speaking one can describe three periods:
- Until 1910, there were flat costs with year-to-year variation in inpatient mortality determined more by world events and epidemics than by the quality of care.
- Then until 1960 or so value increased modestly with the introduction of novel high-impact therapies, such as penicillin and other antibiotics.
- For the rest of the 20th century research became industrialized, with complex diagnostics and therapeutics to address an expanding array of diseases discovered and introduced: it now became worthwhile to spend more on health care. In this period, each extra $1,000/patient (2010 dollars) spent on hospital treatment led to 2.4 extra patients being discharged alive for every 1,000 admitted (~$400k to save a life).
Here’s an earlier article looking at health care costs compared to live expectancy which suggest the US health care system is less efficient than that of other countries.
Marc Gawley 