New research has revealed that waste takes up a quarter of U.S. health care costs and spending, according to Health Leaders Media.
The U.S. is the leading nation in what it spends on health care, as the gross domestic product share of health care spending is roughly 18 percent and only shows signs of increasing. Previous research has proved that waste made up 30 percent of health care spending.
Health care spending is forecast to reach $3.82 trillion by the end of 2019.
Waste was broken up into six categories: failure of care delivery, failure of care coordination, over-treatment or low-value care, pricing failure, fraud and abuse, and administrative complexity. Medication pricing, payer-based health services pricing, and laboratory-based and ambulatory pricing were also included with pricing failure.
“Implementation of effective measures to eliminate waste represents an opportunity to reduce the continued increases in U.S. health care expenditures," the Journal of the American Medical Association wrote, according to Health Leaders Media.
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