SPOTLIGHT: Up to $850B of healthcare spending is wasteful

A new analysis by Thomson Reuters concludes that administrative inefficiency, needless treatment, medical mistakes and fraud account for $600 billion to $850 billion in unnecessary healthcare expenditures each year, or as much as one-third of all U.S. healthcare spending. The research firm found that unnecessary care--mostly overuse of antibiotics and diagnostic tests--accounts for 40 percent of healthcare waste, while administrative inefficiency contributes another 17 percent of costs. Provider errors account for 12 percent of waste, and preventable errors and lack of care coordination each contribute 6 percent to the total. FierceHealthcare