A Painless Way To Hold Down Health Costs?

NPR reports on a way to reduce national health care costs: "Getting doctors and hospitals in the parts of the country that spend the most on medical care now to bring that spending more in line with that of lower-spending regions." Researchers at The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care "have found two key points. First, it"s clear that patients who live in the lower spending areas do just as well as those where spending is higher. But just as important, more is not always better: Sometimes more spending can lead to worse outcomes." In lower-spending areas, "more care tends to be provided by primary care physicians, and patients in those areas are much less likely to spend time in the hospital for care that could be provided elsewhere." But "Patients in those higher spending communities are twice as likely to have 10 or more different physicians involved in their care. тЂ¦ And it"s really hard for physicians to maintain effective communication when there are so many more of them involved in a patient"s care," says Elliott Fisher, principal investigator for the Dartmouth Atlas.