Fierce Healthcare writes: While 10 percent of Medicare patients account for 73 percent of acute care treatment costs, those high-risk patients didn’t incur preventable hospital treatment any more frequently than other Medicare patients, a study published online Monday by the Journal of the American Medical Association found. The findings strike a blow to some healthcare cost-containment strategies, and suggest those strategies focused on improving outpatient chronic disease management may ignore the biggest and most expensive problems for high-cost Medicare patients, the authors concluded.
Read more: Curbing preventable hospitalizations won’t contain Medicare costs – FierceHealthcare http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/curbing-preventable-hospitalizations-not-key-medicare-cost-containment/2013-06-25