A Comparison Of Hospital Administrative Costs In Eight Nations: US Costs Exceed All Others By Far
By David U. Himmelstein, Miraya Jun, Reinhard Busse, Karine Chevreul, Alexander Geissler, Patrick Jeurissen, Sarah Thomson, Marie-Amelie Vinet and Steffie Woolhandler
Health Affairs, September 2014
Abstract
A few studies have noted the outsize administrative costs of US hospitals, but no research has compared these costs across multiple nations with various types of health care systems. We assembled a team of international health policy experts to conduct just such a challenging analysis of hospital administrative costs across eight nations: Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. We found that administrative costs accounted for 25.3 percent of total US hospital expenditures—a percentage that is increasing. Next highest were the Netherlands (19.8 percent) and England (15.5 percent), both of which are transitioning to market-oriented payment systems. Scotland and Canada, whose single-payer systems pay hospitals global operating budgets, with separate grants for capital, had the lowest administrative costs. Costs were intermediate in France and Germany (which bill per patient but pay separately for capital projects) and in Wales. Reducing US per capita spending for hospital administration to Scottish or Canadian levels would have saved more than $150 billion in 2011. This study suggests that the reduction of US administrative costs would best be accomplished through the use of a simpler and less market-oriented payment scheme.
From the Discussion
Hospitals’ administrative overhead varied more than twofold across the nations we studied as a share of total hospital costs and more than fourfold in absolute terms. These costs were far higher in the United States than elsewhere.
In all nations, hospital administrators must procure and coordinate the facilities, supplies, and personnel needed for good care. In nations where administrators have few responsibilities beyond these logistical matters, administration seems to require about 12 percent of hospital expenditures.
Modes of hospital payment can increase the complexity and costs associated with two additional management tasks: garnering operating funds and securing capital funds for modernization and expansion.
Garnering operating funds requires little administrative work in nations such as Canada, Scotland, and Wales, where hospitals receive global, lump-sum budgets. In contrast, per patient billing (for example, using DRGs) requires additional clerical and management personnel and special-purpose IT systems. This is true even in countries—such as France and Germany—where payment rates, documentation, and billing procedures are uniform.
Billing is even more complex in nations where each hospital must bargain over payment rates with multiple payers, whose documentation requirements and billing procedures often vary, as is the case in the United States and the Netherlands.
Differences in how hospitals obtain capital funds also appear to affect administrative costs. The combination of direct government grants for capital with separate global operating budgets—as in Scotland and Canada—was associated with the lowest administrative costs. (Wales has recently transitioned to such a system, reversing previous market reforms.) Hospitals in France and Germany, where direct government grants account for a substantial share of hospital capital funding, have relatively low administrative costs despite per patient, DRG-based billing.
Administration is costliest in nations where surpluses from day-to-day operations are the main source of hospital capital funds: the United States and, increasingly, the Netherlands and England. In such health care systems, the need to accumulate capital funds for modernization and expansion stimulates administrators to undertake the additional work that is needed to identify and pursue profit opportunities.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/9/1586.abstract
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Bureaucracy consumes one-quarter of US hospitals’ budgets, twice as much as in other nations: Health Affairs study
PNHP Press Release, September 8, 2014
A study of hospital administrative costs in eight nations published today in the September issue of Health Affairs finds that hospital bureaucracy consumed 25.3 percent of hospital budgets in the U.S. in 2011, far more than in other nations.
Administrative costs were lowest (about 12 percent) in Scotland and Canada, whose single-payer systems fund hospitals through global, lump-sum budgets, much as a fire department is funded in the U.S.
The article attributes the high administrative costs in the U.S. to two factors: (1) the complexity of billing a multiplicity of insurers with varying payment rates, rules and documentation requirements; and (2) the entrepreneurial imperative for hospitals to amass profits (or, for nonprofit hospitals, surpluses) in order to fund the modernization and upgrades essential to survival.
“We’re squandering $150 billion each year on hospital bureaucracy,” said lead author Dr. David Himmelstein, a professor at the CUNY/Hunter College School of Public Health and lecturer at Harvard Medical School. “And $300 billion more is wasted each year on insurance companies’ overhead and the paperwork they inflict on doctors.”
He added: “Only a single-payer reform can squeeze out the bureaucratic waste and use the money to give patients the care they need. Instead, we’re layering on more bureaucracy in insurance exchanges and ‘accountable care organizations.’”
https://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/september/bureaucracy-consumes-one-quarter-of-us-hospitals’-budgets-twice-as-much-as-in-ot
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
This international comparison of hospital administrative costs further documents the profound administrative waste that characterizes U.S. health care financing. This study is particularly important because it clarifies the two major factors resulting in this waste: 1) the administrative complexity of interacting with a multitude of insurers, and 2) “the entrepreneurial imperative for hospitals to amass profits or surpluses” in a system with market-driven pricing.
Although all other nations waste less than we do on administration, they do so in varying degrees. Thus we can learn lessons from them, especially the two lessons above. Extrapolating from this Health Affairs article, the solution for hospital financing is obvious: switch to single payer and use global budgets for hospitals and separate budgeting for capital improvements. But don’t stop there. Apply single payer principles to the financing of our entire health care delivery system. That would free up perhaps $400 billion or more that could be used to ensure appropriate health care for everyone.
