Outpatient care made up a greater portion of rising healthcare spending over the past decade, according to a Health Care Cost Institute analysis, AJMC reports.
HCCI used claims data from 2007 to 2016 for about 40 million Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare customers, as well as data from 2012 to 2016 for Kaiser Permanente beneficiaries. The study covered spending in four service categories: inpatient hospital, outpatient facility, professional services and prescription drugs.
Here's what you should know:
1. Researchers observed growth in spending across all service categories, but declining utilization. The average annual growth rate for the 10-year period was 4.1 percent.
2. Outpatient care, which includes outpatient surgery, increased its share of spending. In contrast, spending on inpatient medical and surgical admissions decreased.
3. Outpatient surgery, brand-name prescriptions and emergency department visits drove 48 percent of the per-capita spending growth.
4. Outpatient and professional services drove a 43 percent increase in per-capita out-of-pocket spending.
5. Private employer-sponsored health insurance comprised the majority of healthcare spending, surpassing Medicare by billions of dollars. Healthcare spending per person with employer-sponsored insurance rose 44 percent from 2007 to 2016, from $3,752 to $5,394.
6. HCCI is an independent, nonpartisan research organization with partial funding from four insurers. Researchers said the study may not be completely representative of all workplace insurance beneficiaries, it excludes spending trends for patients with public insurance, and the per-capita health spending data doesn't include certain health insurance premium or drug rebate information.