ARTICLE SUMMARY:
The first comprehensive, data-based analysis of US spending on healthcare by condition, an ongoing project of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, aims to provide a more accurate assessment of US spending per disease, with potential to inform policy, industry, insurers, and other stakeholders. It concludes, to the surprise of some, we spend the most on type 2 diabetes, followed by musculoskeletal disorders and oral dental care.
The US spends more than $4 trillion a year on healthcare. Thanks to ground-breaking research at The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, we have important, granular data on variations in cost and quality of US healthcare by region. We also have data on hospital admissions, hospital visits, and specific services.
But until recently, we have not comprehensively and methodically analyzed spending per health condition. A research group at the University of Washington (UWA) has for the first time been tracking health expenditures by condition, based on analysis of insurance claims and hospital administrative/encounter-level data extracted from seven sources, with implications for policy makers, insurers, providers, and vendors. Its findings are the most accurate and granular we have to date, says Joseph Dieleman, PhD, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the UWA, and lead author of a paper on US healthcare spending by condition and county, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on February 14.
