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Patients made more use of the nation’s healthcare system in 2013, increasing their spending on drugs and making more visits to specialists and hospitals for outpatient treatment.
It’s the first time in three years that healthcare utilization has risen, says the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. The Institute’s study, Medicine Use and Shifting Costs of Healthcare: A Review of the Use of Medicines in the United States in 2013, was released this week.
According to the study, Americans spent $329.2 billion on medicine last year, a 3.2% increase from 2012. The study attributes the increase fewer patent expirations (which allow lower priced generics to be sold), price increases, new medicines, and more doctor and hospital visits.
The out-of-pocket for prescription drugs, however, is declining, the Institute found, and now averages $5 for about 57% of the retail prescriptions filled. Almost a quarter of all prescription meds now have no out-of-pocket.
However, patients with insurance have higher overall out-of-pocket costs in the form of higher deductibles and co-insurance payments. According to the report’s findings:
- Insurance coverage has been shifting to high-deductible plan designs over the past decade, now accounting for 20% of insured patients.
- Average deductibles, where patients see the full cost of their healthcare until they reach an insurance threshold, are up over 150% from five years ago.
- Plans with general deductibles, which can apply to both medical procedures and prescription drugs, now account for 78% of plans, and more than half of those plans have a deductible of $1,000 or more.
- 38% of employer-sponsored insured workers have a deductible of more than $1,000.
Visits to primary care physicians were off a modest .7%, but specialists saw a 4.9% increase, with visits from seniors jumping by 9.5%.
Emergency room visits increased more modestly in 2013 than in any of the previous two years, even as hospitals saw a 10.5% increase in inpatient admissions. Still, such admissions account for a mere 2.4% of all hospital admissions. At 68% of the total, outpatient care has the biggest share of hospital admissions.
