HOSPITAL COSTS PREDICTED TO RISE SHARPLY IN COMING YEARS.Future spending for hospital services will increase substantially, an economist predicted last week. Stuart Altman Alt·man , Robert Born 1925. American film director and screenwriter whose film credits include M*A*S*H (1970), for which he won an Academy Award, and The Player (1992). of Brandeis University Brandeis University, at Waltham, Mass.; coeducational; chartered and opened 1948. Although Brandeis was founded by members of the American Jewish community, the university operates as an independent, nonsectarian institution. told a symposium symposium In ancient Greece, an aristocratic banquet at which men met to discuss philosophical and political issues and recite poetry. It began as a warrior feast. Rooms were designed specifically for the proceedings. sponsored by the journal Health Affairs and the Federation of American Hospitals that total real hospital spending between 2000 and 2012 could increase substantially - by 75 percent, at an average annual rate of 4.8 percent. Altman, chairman of the Council on Health Care Economics and Policy and former chairman of the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission, indicated the key factors driving increased hospital spending are the increased use and diffusion diffusion, in chemistry, the spontaneous migration of substances from regions where their concentration is high to regions where their concentration is low. Diffusion is important in many life processes. of technology and "the baby-boomer propensity to consume" health care services at a rate greater than that of older generations. Technology is the primary cost driver of hospital spending, Altman and a co-author co·au·thor or co-au·thor n. A collaborating or joint author. tr.v. co·au·thored, co·au·thor·ing, co·au·thors To be a collaborating or joint author of: "He and a colleague . . . note in a study appearing in the latest edition of Health Affairs. "Although full technologies and cost-reducing innovations are predicted for the future, for the most part they have not yet arrived. Hence, most new technological innovations in the next 10 years are still likely to be cost-increasing," he reasoned. |
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