Larry DeGhetaldi M.D. President of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation in Santa Cruz California has been studying part A and B 2008 Medicare data by county and has found some very interesting results in Wisconsin.
Dr. DeGhetaldi has recently testified at the Institute of Medicine (I.O.M.) on the issue of variation in medical costs. He has risk adjusted(using CMS risk adjustment methodology) the Medicare claims data from 2008 and compared county by county performance for every state. This means healthcare providers cannot argue they have sicker patients. His analysis in Wisconsin shows wide variation in costs per county which can be viewed by clicking on the first link below. A color coded map is also included, green being high performing counties and red being low performing which is found on the second link.
This analysis shows the two lowest cost counties in Wisconsin for Medicare expenditures are LaCrosse and Outagamie(Appleton). Both of these counties are served by Healthcare Value Leaders members Gunderson Lutheran and Thedacare respectively. Both of these organizations have been focused on taking waste out of care processes for years and both have had community wide initiatives regarding end of life care.
What is compelling for America is the result listed at the third link below. This shows national expenditures in comparison with expenditures in Outagamie county where ThedaCare is the market share leader found on the third link below. If U.S. Medicare expenditure could be reduced to the level of Outagamie county a savings of $57 billion dollars per year could be achieved.
Both Gunderson and ThedaCare have been quite willing to share their successes with the rest of the country by conducting site visits, testifying to the I.O.M and to Congress, publishing peer reviewed journal articles as well as books such as On the Mend. We've done our part, the question is when are the high cost providers going to do theirs?
To view the data, click below:
Map1Chart_Wisconsin_CMS_Data_by_County_Risk_Adjustedv2_(2)[1]1Sheet1_Wisconsin_CMS_Data_by_County_Risk_Adjustedv2_(2)
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