- Revenue Cycle Management
- COVID-19
- Reimbursement
- Diabetes Awareness Month
- Risk Management
- Patient Retention
- Staffing
- Medical Economics® 100th Anniversary
- Coding and documentation
- Business of Endocrinology
- Telehealth
- Physicians Financial News
- Cybersecurity
- Cardiovascular Clinical Consult
- Locum Tenens, brought to you by LocumLife®
- Weight Management
- Business of Women's Health
- Practice Efficiency
- Finance and Wealth
- EHRs
- Remote Patient Monitoring
- Sponsored Webinars
- Medical Technology
- Billing and collections
- Acute Pain Management
- Exclusive Content
- Value-based Care
- Business of Pediatrics
- Concierge Medicine 2.0 by Castle Connolly Private Health Partners
- Practice Growth
- Concierge Medicine
- Business of Cardiology
- Implementing the Topcon Ocular Telehealth Platform
- Malpractice
- Influenza
- Sexual Health
- Chronic Conditions
- Technology
- Legal and Policy
- Money
- Opinion
- Vaccines
- Practice Management
- Patient Relations
- Careers
Most healthcare spending goes to small portion of population
Relatively small slices of the population account for substantial amounts of the nation's healthcare expenditures
A new government study confirms what many primary care physicians have long suspected, based on their own experience: A relatively small number of Americans consume a large portion of the nation’s healthcare resources.
A Statistical Brief prepared by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) shows that in 2010 the top 1% of the population, as ranked by healthcare expenses, accounted for 21.4% of the country’s healthcare spending of $1.263 trillion. The top 5% accounted for just under half of the total expenditures, and the top 50% accounted for a whopping 97.2% of expenditures, leaving just 2.8% of the total for the bottom 50%.
Although heavily concentrated, the spending numbers actually represent an improvement from the late 1990s. At that time the top 1% accounted for 28% of healthcare spending, and the top 5% accounted for more than 50%.
The Statistical Brief examines concentration of healthcare spending using a variety of categories, including age, race sex, insurance status, chronic condition, and income. Some of its findings:
- Among the uninsured, the top 5% accounted for 67.3% of spending, with an annual mean expenditure level of $17,453 per patient.
- Among children under age 18, the top 5% accounted for 54.6% of spending, with an annual mean expenditure of $16,900 per person. At the other end of the age spectrum, the top 5% of those aged 65 and older accounted for 34% of spending among that sub-group, but the annual mean expenditure was $67,474.
- Among non-Hispanic blacks, the top 5% accounted for 58.4% of expenditures with an annual mean expenditure of $47,329, while for the top 5% of non-Hispanic whites the figures were 46.2% and $43,236, respectively.
- Among Hispanics, the top 5% accounted for 60.3% of healthcare expenditures with a mean annual expenditure of $27,307.
- The top 5% of men accounted for 55.7% of healthcare expenditures, but the annual mean individual levels were nearly equal between the sexes-$40,852 for men versus $40,617 for women.
Data for the survey were taken from the household component of the AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.
