The Commonwealth Fund found an inverse relationship between employer spending on healthcare and the number of preventable hospitalizations.
There is also an unexpected, but weak, positive correlation between doctor visits and ER use in the employer-paid sector.
The Washington Post reports that professionals reading lab test results don’t understand false positive arithmetic. As a result, your employees may be getting diagnosed and treated for conditions they don’t have. More screens lead to more findings. One vendor conducts 40 tests, informing 45% of employees they have “newly discovered conditions.”
Health Affairs reports an epidemic of overtreatment. Author Shannon Brownlee proposes that patients “need to start asking uncomfortable questions,” to determine if treatments are appropriate.
30-second shameless plug: Quizzify agrees with all the academic research, all of this week’s news, and also with Dr. Atul Gawande, that employees get far too much healthcare today. This is expensive, and negatively impacts employee health, and self-perceived health. Indeed, one Quizzify catchphrases is: “Just because it’s healthcare doesn’t mean it’s good for you.” Our material educates employees about the risks of too much healthcare, and how to identify and avoid those risks.
Come see us at PERKS convention in Chicago. Do you live or work near Chicago and would like to attend? The first 5 people to email us at hello@quizzify.com will get a free ticket!
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