PORTLAND, Ore., Jul 7, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- U.S. healthcare can cause harm
when the focus is on providing services instead of improving health, two
physicians said in a commentary.
Dr. Charles M. Kilo, chief executive officer of GreenField Health in Portland,
Ore., and co-author Dr. Eric B. Larson of Group Health Cooperative in Seattle
distinguish health from healthcare -- asserting one can never have too much
health but with overuse of medicine one can get so much healthcare it causes
harm.
"Although healthcare's objective should be to improve health, its primary
emphasis has been on producing services," the authors said in a statement.
Fee-for-service payment encourages using more treatment, new technology and
extra testing, the researchers said. These additional services, and their
attendant extra costs, may harm health, they said.
Kilo and Larson wrote in the Journal of American Medical Association that the
cost pressure that healthcare places on employers, individuals and families has
become so significant healthcare may well be inducing aggregate harm to the
health of communities when the cost shift involved in funding healthcare is
taken into account.
In addition to direct harm from healthcare, which includes adverse physical and
emotional effects, indirect harm comes from the collateral effect of the
opportunity cost of healthcare spending -- money spent on healthcare that could
have been spent on education, jobs and environmental quality, all important
determinants of health, the authors said.
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Copyright 2009 by United Press International