An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

This may be at least part of the reason that the U.S. life expectancy is shorter, and per capita medical costs higher, than in countries with universal health care.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908185119.htm

Better Care Of Sickest Patients Can Actually Save Hospitals Money, Says Largest Study Of Its Kind

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2008) — A new study finds hospitals can save more than $300 a day taking care of seriously ill patients while giving them even better care.

"Americans are aging with serious, chronic illnesses," said Dr. R. Sean Morrison, director of the National Palliative Care Research Center and the study's lead author. "But despite enormous expenditures, they still get uncoordinated care, extreme burdens on their families and poorly managed pain."

* According to the study of eight very different hospitals:
* Hospitals saved from $279 to $374 per day on patients in palliative care programs.
* Hospitals saved $1700 to $4900 on each admission of a palliative care patient.

Savings included significant reductions in pharmacy, laboratory and intensive care costs. This means savings of more than $1.3 million for a 300-bed community hospital and more than $2.5 million for the average academic medical center.

"The potential to reduce the suffering of millions of Americans is enormous," said Diane Meier, MD, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care, a national organization based at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "This study proves that better care can go hand in hand with a better bottom line."

Until a decade ago, palliative care in the U.S. was typically available only to patients living at home and enrolled in a hospice program. By 2006, more than 41% of U.S hospitals reported having a program.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070613112355.htm

Early Palliative Care Linked To Shorter Stays In Intensive Care
ScienceDaily (June 14, 2007) — Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that early palliative care interventions can reduce the length of stay for seriously ill patients in the medical intensive care unit (MICU) by more than seven days without having an impact on mortality rates.
...
In addition to improving quality of care, proactive palliative care consultation in the MICU has an unintended, yet relevant, benefit of financial savings. Extrapolating from the study's findings, the intervention potentially saved approximately 1,400 MICU patient days at a savings of around $450 per day.