Report: More Expensive Care Does Not Equal Better Quality

By John Amick

Better quality health service does not necessarily correlate with more expensive and intensive care according to a report published today. The study examines such comparisons on an individual-hospital level rather than a more common regional snapshot of care/cost patterns.

“We found no evidence that hospitals with higher spending provided better care, whether we looked at all hospitals across the country or limited our study to academic medical centers, or hospitals within a single region. In fact, in some cases hospitals that spent more provided worse care,” said Laura Yasaitis of Dartmouth Medical School, a member of the research team that spearheaded the study.

The research team examined "2,712 U.S. hospitals with complete data on utilization, spending, and quality performance by quintile of end-of-life spending" ranging from $16,059 in the lowest quintile to $34,742 in the highest. Research found that hospitals that spent more actually performed worse on overall quality measures than lower-spending hospitals.

“The fact that some hospitals in the same region are able to provide exemplary care at lower costs points to the need for better reporting of both costs and quality, and for a greater understanding of what processes lead to this improvement in performance,” added Professor Amitabh Chandra of Harvard University, another research member.

Read the entire report.