Our friend Julie Ferguson of Workers’ Comp Insider hosted this week’s Olympic edition of the Cavalcade of Risk, and it’s an excellent round-up. Another of my favorite bloggers had an excellent article in this edition of the Cavalcade. Be sure to check out Dr. Jaan Sidorov’s post about how several cost-reducing interventions introduced together will likely have more of an impact than attempts to focus on one cost-control alone. His analysis of the factors that caused the reduction in the use of high-cost medical imaging is really interesting.
Similar strategies – that utilize a variety of tactics introduced together – could likely be helpful in reducing healthcare spending in other areas, like pharmaceuticals for example. Health insurance carriers could be involved in the solution (with more prior authorizations or computer systems that prompt doctors to always start with the lowest-cost drug and then work up, etc.) but with buy-in and cooperation from medical providers, the public and the pharmaceutical industry itself, the impact would likely be far more impressive.