Saturday 23 August 2008

MIT Sloan Professor Finds Higher Healthcare Spending Results In Better Outcomes

�If you have a heart attack while on vacation, your chances for a positive outcome ar better if you seek treatment in a hospital that tends to spend more. While previous research comparing high and low-spending areas in the U.S. suggests that higher health care spending does not improve health outcomes, a prof at MIT Sloan School of Management found in a recent study that tourists wHO become ominous and receive emergency aid at "high-spending" hospitals make significantly lower mortality rates compared to tourists world Health Organization end up in "lower-spending" hospitals.


MIT Sloan Professor Joseph Doyle's new research contradicts the common literary argument that higher healthcare disbursal does non result in better health outcomes and sometimes regular results in worse wellness outcomes. Instead, Doyle establish that "when patients wHO have a serious wellness emergency far from home are exposed to different healthcare systems, high-spending areas are associated with significantly lower mortality."


Doyle's study compared outcomes of heart attack patients in Florida who were exposed to different health care systems that were not designed for them: tourists on vacation when a health emergency stricken. Since most people don't choose their vacation destinations based on the budgets of local hospitals, he was able to equate the results from both high and low-spending areas.


He famous that it is very difficult to show returns to healthcare spending because hospitals in general tend to spend more on sicker patients. That is why he focused on a group of patients with exchangeable health conditions (heart attacks) and world Health Organization were visiting similar destinations, but wHO sought intervention at hospitals which varied widely by spending levels. "I wanted to compare apples to apples, and I found that the patients in high-spending areas have higher survival rates than the ones in lower-spending areas."


According to the paper, a "typical comparison of a high-spending area and a low-spending one would represent a 50% remainder in healthcare spending intensity. Such a disparity is associated with a 1.5 point lower mortality rate among heart-related emergency patients compared to a mortality of 6%."


Doyle added that his research also addressed the publication of whether teaching hospitals, which cost more to run than nonteaching hospitals, tend to have better healthcare outcomes. "I plant that among local populations, going to a teaching hospital was not associated with deathrate, possibly because these hospitals tend to treat sicker people. However, among tourists in an emergency position, going to a instruction hospital resulted in lower mortality."


In contrast to findings in previous lit, which possess been cited in support of limits on Medicare growth, Doyle said, "It looks like spending has an impact in damage of delivery lives in emergency situations." He noted that the U.S. spends over $2 trillion per year or 16% of GDP, with increases expected as the population ages. "There is a assumption that practically of our healthcare disbursal is diminished" he aforesaid, "but high levels of spending english hawthorn be justified because it also seems to increase survival rates in emergency situations."

http://www.mit.edu


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