Experts Agree, Waste and Errors in Health Care Remain Huge Issues

July 7, 2014

On Tuesday, July 1st, Leapfrog President & CEO Leah Binder joined Dr. Elliott Fisher, Director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice; Jean Pinder, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ClearHealthCosts; and Daniel Wolfson, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the ABIM Foundation in a POLITICO roundtable discussion on cost, quality, and transparency in healthcare.  

"Despite health care industry concerns about wasteful and unnecessary care, it’s nearly impossible for patients to overrule their doctors when they think they’re getting a procedure they don’t need, a prominent patient care advocate argued Tuesday.

'I’ve had four unnecessary EKGs,' Daniel Wolfson, executive vice president of  the ABIM Foundation, said at the POLITICO Pro Health Care breakfast briefing at the Newseum. 'I think it’s an uphill battle for the patient to talk a physician out of a procedure.' Overtreatment and preventable medical errors are huge drivers of health care costs and lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths every year, but action to  reverse both continues to lag, noted Leah Binder, CEO of The Leapfrog Group, a health safety advocate that represents employers."

Click here to read the full recap of the Politico event, and here to view the video recording.

 

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