$200+ billion annual opportunity in USA from using medicines more responsibly, IMS finds

Avoidable costs of more than $200 billion are incurred each year in the US health care system as a result of medicines not being used responsibly by patients and health care professionals, according to a new study released yesterday June 19) by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. This represents 8% of the country’s total annual health care expenditures and amounts to millions of avoidable hospital admissions, outpatient treatments, pharmaceutical prescriptions and emergency room visits for patients.

The report – titled Avoidable Costs in US Healthcare: The $200 Billion Opportunity from Using Medicines More Responsibly – examines six areas that contribute to unnecessary costs: medication non-adherence, delayed evidence-based treatment practice, misuse of antibiotics, medication errors, suboptimal use of generics and mismanaged polypharmacy in older adults. Together, these areas lead to unnecessary utilization of health care resources involving an estimated 10 million hospital admissions, 78 million outpatient treatments, 246 million prescriptions and four million emergency room visits annually. The study found significant opportunities for improvement – to ensure that patients receive the right medicines at the right time, and take them in the right way.

“As our study makes clear, drugs are often not used optimally, resulting in significant unnecessary health system spending and patient burdens,” said Murray Aitken, executive director, IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics adding: “Those avoidable costs could pay for the health care of more than 24 million currently uninsured US citizens. Reaching a meaningful level of consensus and alignment among stakeholders, based on measured and proven success models, is a key step to unlocking the $200 billion opportunity identified in our study.”