4 things to know about healthcare overspending & savings opportunities

The savvy consumer is a significant topic of conversation in healthcare, but there are still dollars going to waste due to lack of patient knowledge.

Here are four points on healthcare spending waste and the possibility of cost savings, according to a Vitals report.

1. Patients often waste money by selecting the wrong healthcare facility for care. Each year $18 billion are wasted on avoidable emergency department visits.

2. Nearly half of patients, 40 percent, go to the emergency department for non-emergency medical visits.

3. Though patients are beginning to price compare in healthcare, there remains a knowledge gap. Patients do not always know how much the cost of a procedure varies from one facility to the next. For example, the national median for an appendectomy is $33,000. The procedure costs $1,500 on the low end and $180,000 on the high end.

4. When actively shopping around for healthcare, the average consumer can save a significant amount. The average consumer saved the following per procedure after doing thorough research on procedure costs:

•    Bariatric surgery: $12,436
•    Hip replacement: $7,649
•    Gall bladder surgery: $3,187
•    Colonoscopy: $1,351
•    MRI: $780

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