Quality and Safety in Health Care, Part VII: Lower Costs and Higher Quality

The Institute of Medicine report entitled The Health Care Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes discussed numerous ways to decrease costs in the health care system without decreasing quality. The use of evidence-based medicine, eliminating wasteful spending such as needlessly high administrative costs, having more preventive services, having a better reimbursement system that emphasized quality, developing a less fragmented and more efficient medical delivery system, having more transparency for patients on the outcomes of different providers, having greater health care literacy for patients, and eliminating fraud were some of the recommendations. The total savings from eliminating unnecessary health care costs was estimated to be over 3 quarters of a trillion dollars each year.