Page 43 - 2017 V1 InsideOut

Lofty goals to improve the quality of healthcare while reducing costs have dramatically transformed patient care in the U.S. within two short de- cades. Factors of change — primarily advancement in pharmaceutical research and medications—caused a profound shift in treatment, one that moved patients away from receiving medical services throughout the 1980s and toward consuming phar- maceutical medications in the 1990s.
In 1980, hospital services accounted for 40 percent of national health expenditures (NHE), while prescrip- tion drugs accounted for less than
5 percent. In 1990, hospital care fell to 35 percent of NHE, while prescrip- tion drugs rose to 6 percent. And in 2014, hospital treatment dropped to 32 percent, while prescription drugs increased to almost 10 percent.
Throughout the past decades, the average length of stay in all hospital types dipped, from an average of 10 days in 1980 to 6 days in 2013 (the latest year data was available at time of writing). Outpatient prescription drug use, however, increased. From 1988 to 1994, slightly less than 12 percent of the population reported taking three or more prescription drugs within the past 30 days; from 2009 to 2012, almost 21 percent of the population reported taking three or more prescription drugs in the past 30 days.1
Simplistically put, labor-intensive services were replaced with prescrip- tion drugs to reduce the rising cost
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