“A recent Premier Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC) analysis found that total care for patients who experienced an opioid overdose resulted in $1.94 billion in annual hospital costs across 647 healthcare facilities nationwide.
Premier®, a healthcare improvement company, found that these costs were concentrated among nearly 100,000 opioid overdose patients with nearly 430,000 total visits across emergency department (ED), inpatient and other care settings. Sixty-six percent of the patients were insured by public programs (33 percent Medicare and 33 percent Medicaid), 16 percent used a commercial payer, 14 percent were uninsured and 3 percent were covered under other programs, such as workers’ compensation.
Annual hospital care for overdose patients represents a significant portion of healthcare expenditures and can be detrimental to providers in regions with high addiction rates. For instance, by extrapolating the cost trends Premier identified in its analysis, the total added costs to the U.S. healthcare system are estimated to amount to $11.3 billion annually, or 1 percent of all hospital expenditures. If the payer mix remained constant, $7.4 billion of the expense would be borne by the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
Read more at: https://www.pharmiweb.com/pressreleases/pressrel.asp?ROW_ID=300646
Source: Pharmaweb.com – January 3, 2019
