Margaret provides some international context around the size of the fraud, abuse and waste problem in healthcare systems.
The World Health Organization has estimated that between 20% and 40% of all health spending is wasted.
In 2017, The Lancet (one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world) published a series of articles called ‘Right Care’. One of the articles was called ‘Evidence for overuse of medical services around the world.’
The article explains how waste caused by overuse causes harm to both patients and healthcare systems.
The size of the problem greatly varies but the authors stated “Worldwide, overuse of individual services can be as high as 89% in certain populations.”
These eye-watering figures are nothing new to those who work in the field and follow the academic literature.
But the only way to prove the size of the problem we are facing here in Australia is to do a deep dive into patient medical records and cross check against the billing records.
That is why we are calling for a medical records review to validate our findings.
Dr Margaret Faux (PhD) – Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Synapse Medical Services
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