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At a time when one in three Americans report difficulty paying medical bills, up to $750 billion is being spent on care that does not help patients become healthier. Although physicians are routinely required to manage expensive resources, traditional medical training offers few opportunities to learn how to deliver the highest quality care at the lowest possible cost. While the gap is glaring the problem is not new.
In 1975, the department of medicine at Charlotte Memorial Hospital initiated a system to monitor medical costs generated by house officers. In the Journal of Medical Education leaders of the Charlotte initiative described how simply being aware of how clinical decisions impact the costs of care could decrease inpatient length of stay by 21%. Over the last four decades there have been dozens of similar efforts to educate medical students and residents about opportunities to improve the value of care. Some interventions were simple like the one in Charlotte, and simply revealed the cost of routine tests to their trainees. Others provided more sophisticated didactics, interrogated medical records to give trainee-specific feedback on utilization, or creatively leveraged the hospital computer order-entry systems.
