Eliminating waste in US health care

DM Berwick, AD Hackbarth - Jama, 2012 - jamanetwork.com
The need is urgent to bring US health care costs into a sustainable range for both public and
private payers. Commonly, programs to contain costs use cuts, such as reductions in
payment levels, benefit structures, and eligibility. A less harmful strategy would reduce
waste, not value-added care. The opportunity is immense. In just 6 categories of waste—
overtreatment, failures of care coordination, failures in execution of care processes,
administrative complexity, pricing failures, and fraud and abuse—the sum of the lowest …