How to Pay for Results Collection for Healthcare
This entry was posted on 6/6/2007 12:56 PM and is filed under Healthcare Reform,Healthcare.
How to Pay for Results Collection for Healthcare
It will cost too much…
I’ve seen this thrown out as a reason why we shouldn’t go through the effort of collecting risk-adjusted results by medical condition. As I stated in previous blogs, Porter & Teisberg found that costs have been reduced by collecting results by medical condition.
Obviously, ‘it will cost too much’ is just an excuse to avoid accountability.
So, I decided to look for a reasonable source of revenue to help offset the costs of this effort. Here’s the thought: use a portion of the spending on healthcare advertising. I found numbers for pharmaceutical companies first. Some interesting points:
From the National Institute for Healthcare Management:
· "Spending on "direct-to-consumer" (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs rose 35% from 1999 to
2000 — from $1.8 billion to $2.5 billion. DTC ad spending has more than doubled since 1997."
· "Drugs that are heavily advertised to consumers typically rank high in sales -- 6 of the top 10 drugs
advertised through DTC were among the top 20 drugs in dollar sales and in the number of prescriptions
dispensed in 2000.
· Sales of the most heavily advertised drugs have increased much more rapidly than for other drugs – from
1999-2000:
-the dollar sales of the 50 most heavily promoted drugs increased 32%,
while the sales of all other drugs increased 14%;
-the number of prescriptions sold for the top 50 promoted drugs increased 25%,
compared to 4% for all other drugs."
From the Kaiser Foundation:
· "This means that each additional dollar spent on DTC advertising in 2000 yielded $4.20 in additional
pharmaceutical sales in that year.
· Promotional spending by pharmaceutical manufacturers has risen steadily in recent years, more than
doubling from $9.2 billion in 1996 to $19.1 billion in 2001, an average annual increase of 16%. …
promotional spending (86%) remains directed at physicians."
Hmmm…. What if we asked advertisers to give ½ of 1% of their annual advertising budgets to pay for results collection and posting on the web? At $19.2 billion, ½ of 1% equals $95 million – gee, that ought to do it, don’t you think? And that’s just pharmaceutical companies. Add in the advertising dollars spent by hospitals, doctors, health insurance providers – I think we’re covered for the next decade!
So this idea that we can’t afford to collect these results because ‘it costs too much’ isn’t even close to valid! After all, if the information is available online (excuse me, that’s accurate information vs. promotional advertising), pharmaceutical and other healthcare companies will not need to advertise so much! The truth is, we can’t afford NOT to do this.…For our health…and out budgets!
