Interesting Information Regarding Home Care

We revisit that CMS report on health care spending in America and see that, while spending in general was steady or down, a few sectors still had surprising growth rates. Like home health and hospital care, for example.

As we previously noted, while CMS found business and private health care spending rates grew slowly or remained level between 2007 and 2010, government health care spending — especially at the federal level — went up.

When money was spent, though, what was it spent on?

Home health, for one thing — it was “one of the fastest-growing services in the National Health Expenditure Accounts in both 2009 and 2010,” says the report. It reached a $70.2 billion total spend in 2010 — a 6.2 percent rise, though down from its 7.5 jump in 2009.

Physician and clinical services, on the other hand, grew more slowly, at a record low rate of 2.5% in 2010. (Clinical services, the report notes, “account for a growing share of total physician and clinical expenditures.”) Retail prescription drug spending grew by just 1.2%, in part slowed by the reduced number of doctor visits.

Roy Edroso (excerpted)