Dive Brief:
- Anthem Blue Cross of California says it saved almost $8 million in one year by focusing on preventive care.
- The company paid participating physicians additional money to enhance their attention toward patients with at least two chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma or congestive heart failure.
- The company says the program caused a 7.3% decline in hospital admissions per 1,000 patients among the six major medical groups studied.
Dive Insight:
Anthem's experiment seeks to press forward on the holy grail in healthcare of reining in costs while also improving outcomes, and provides promising results.
"Any savings we can achieve are important because they contribute to this ongoing notion we have that we need to bend the cost curve," Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, told the Union-Tribune. "I'd say that these results are encouraging. They're suggesting that in a relatively short time period, they've been able to get some results."
The savings are attributed to a reduction in unnecessary tests and procedures and to early interventions that prevented more serious expenses later (read: hospitalization).