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By Timothy Cocks Lost in translation 16 Sep 2014

From vox.com:

$1.43 of every $100 in America goes toward hospital administration

America spends a lot of money on the paperwork that makes hospitals run— $218 billion per year, to be exact. That works out to 1.43 percent of the entire American economy is spent on hospitals’ administrative costs. Of every $100 spent in America, that means $1.43 is going toward the billing specialists and schedulers that make hospitals here work.

Hospital administration has grown as a percent of the economy over the past decade, from 0.9 percent in 2000 to 1.43 percent in 2012, a new paper in the journal Health Affairs shows.

To put this in a bit of context: America spends twice as much on hospital administration as it does on the entire food budget

 

Reminded me of this classic Yes Minister episode

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5zEb1oS9A&w=480&h=360]

The following exchange between the minster and Mrs Rogers, the hospital administrator, from about 12 seconds in

Minister “Isn’t it deplorable that its not being used?”

Mrs Rogers “Oh no, a very good thing in some ways, prolongs its life, cuts down running costs”

M “But there are no patients!”

Mrs R “No, but the essential work of the hospital still has to go on”

M “Aren’t patients the essential work of the hospital?”

Mrs R “Running an organisation of 500 people is a big job minister”….

 

In 2012, the total cost of health spending in the US was $2.8 trillion or 17.2 percent of the total US economy. In the same year, health economists from the John Hopkins University published a paper in The Journal Of Pain that estimated the total cost of chronic pain in the US as $635 billion – per year. Swamping heart disease ($309 billion), cancer ($243 billion) and diabetes ($188 billion). The figures from Australia, Canada and Britain are not far off in relative size.

Based on these numbers, a very quick and dirty calculation suggests that the cost of just administrating healthcare for chronic pain each year in the US is about $50 billion.

None of these numbers are getting smaller.

The well worn words that Einstein probably never said could not be more appropriate; “The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”

 

-Tim Cocks

www.noigroup.com

 

Find a new level of thinking at a noigroup course, or immerse yourself in some brainy books with Explain Pain 2nd Ed and The Graded Motor Imagery Handbook

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