Industry Voices—Overutilization gets all the attention when it comes to rising healthcare costs—but what about underutilization?

Fierce Healthcare October 8, 2020
Robert Kass, Zynx Health

As health policy leaders search for reasons why U.S. healthcare costs continue to soar as compared with healthcare costs of other developed countries, the topic of medical-service overutilization has drawn fresh interest and attention in recent years.

Between 6% and 8% of all U.S. healthcare spending falls into the overuse category, based on conservative estimates, while studies of geographic variation have found the proportion of overuse Medicare spending is closer to 29%, according to a study in The Lancet.

Overuse, which can be defined as the provision of medical services for which the potential for harm exceeds the potential for benefit, often leads to excessive costs and reduces patient safety. Less understood is that the underutilization of medical services is...

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