Seventy-five percent of employers believe hospitals are a "major influence" on overall healthcare costs — even more than prescription drug costs and defensive medicine — according to survey from Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.
For its 2013 Survey of U.S. Employers, Deloitte conducted an online survey in May and June 2013 of 500 randomly selected employers with 50 or more workers that offer health benefits.
The survey asked employers to identify 15 factors that have either a major influence, minor influence or no influence on healthcare costs. A "don't know" option was also available for this survey item.
Here are the top 10 factors employers identified as "major influences."
1. Hospital costs — 75 percent
2. Prescription drug costs — 67 percent
3. Waste and inefficiencies in clinical, administrative and billing processes — 67 percent
4. Defensive medicine — 62 percent
5. Consumers' unhealthy lifestyles and behaviors — 58 percent
6. Government regulation — 56 percent
7. Fraud in the system — 56 percent
8. Overutilization of testing and surgical procedures — 53 percent
9. Payment incentives that reward volume instead of performance — 48 percent
10. Insufficient competition in the health insurance market — 48 percent
Further, 72 percent of surveyed owners/CEOs/presidents, 81 percent of surveyed CFOs and 70 percent of surveyed human resources executives pointed to hospital costs as the top driver of overall healthcare costs.
Only 14 percent of employers said hospitals are a trusted source of information to help them purchase healthcare services based on value. The majority of respondents named independent consultants as their top choice for this.
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