Saving Medicare through Patient-Centered Changes — The Case of Injectables

Medicare covers the cost of injectable drugs only when they're administered in a hospital or physician's office, but considerations of convenience, cost, and quality all argue for encouraging patients to participate in their own care by allowing self-administration. As we debate Medicare&#...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe New England journal of medicine Vol. 368; no. 17; pp. 1572 - 1573
Main Authors Farroni, Jeffrey S, Zwelling, Leonard, Cortes, Jorge, Kantarjian, Hagop
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Waltham, MA Massachusetts Medical Society 25.04.2013
Subjects
Biological and medical sciences
Cost control
Cost Savings
General aspects
Health Care Costs
Health Expenditures - trends
Health Policy
Holistic medicine
Hospitals
Humans
Injections - economics
Medical sciences
Medicare
Medicare - economics
Patient-centered care
Patients
Regulatory approval
Ryan, Paul
Self Administration - economics
Self-administration
United States
Wyden, Ron
United States
North America
America
Canada
United States > US
Medicine
Patient-centered approach
Health insurance
Poverty
Saving
Change
Injection
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Medicare covers the cost of injectable drugs only when they're administered in a hospital or physician's office, but considerations of convenience, cost, and quality all argue for encouraging patients to participate in their own care by allowing self-administration. As we debate Medicare's solvency and the ever-rising cost of health care and health insurance, it makes sense to examine easily implementable policies that will reduce costs. Total Medicare expenditures were $549 billion in 2011. 1 Pursuing more prudent (though perhaps less than ideal) policies, such as those in place in Canada, might have saved over $2 trillion between 1980 and 2009. 2 Ideally, we would find ways to reduce costs without harming beneficiaries, so the $716 billion “cut” to Medicare under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) actually represents savings to be achieved over a 10-year period from anticipated reductions in payments . . .
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0028-4793
1533-4406
DOI:10.1056/NEJMp1213485