Hospital profits go up when complications occur
A surgical complication increases a procedure’s average contribution
margin by 330 percent for the privately insured and 190 percent for
Medicare patients, according to a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study underscores how ludicrous the incentives are in the
American health care system, generally paying doctors for each medical
service they provide, even if some of that care is the result of a
surgery gone wrong...
The study does not imply that hospitals intentionally complicate
surgeries to bring in more revenue. Most surgeries, about 95 percent, go
off without a hitch. What it does suggest to the surgeon, writer and
Harvard professor Atul Gawande is that hospitals now see little reason
to invest in technologies that would reduce complications when the only
prize at the end would be lower income...
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