Differences to face

Two Major Differences Between America And The Rest Of The Developed World

Gus Lubin
Business Insider
Apr. 13, 2011, 11:21 AM

The OECD released a massive pack of data on the developed world this week. America performs well on things like household income and tolerance; and badly on things like health and voting rates.

But there are two measures where the U.S. is far and away the worst.

First, the U.S. prison population is 760 prisoners in 100,000. The next closest country is South Africa at 329 prisoners, while the OECD average is 140 prisoners.

Second, U.S. health spending is 16 percent of GDP. The next closest country is France at 11.2 percent of GDP, while the OECD average is 9.0 percent.

This means that Americans cost more to take care of -- even while their benefits are worse.

Social spending is low on pensions, but high on prisons. Health spending is off the charts, but obesity and life expectancy are worse than average.

Read more.

CitySquare clinic impact

Recently, I received a report on the impact of the work of our Community Health Services team on the health outcomes of our patients.  The analysis compared hospital utilization and costs of CitySquare patients to those of similarly uninsured patients from the Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) service area.

Here’s what we found:

a. CitySquare patients were half as likely to be admitted to BUMC as their non-CitySquare counterparts.

b. When admitted, the average length of stay for our patients was 4.6 days, compared to 5.6 days for the non-CitySquare, uninsured patients.

c. When admitted, the average cost of an inpatient stay for a CitySquare patient was $6,500, compared to $9,100 for non-CitySquare, uninsured patients.

d. Unfortunately, this study revealed that CitySquare patients were just as likely to visit the ED as their non-CDM counterparts. Among other responses, this finding should motivate us to make medical contact information more readily available to our patients for those after hours times when care is needed. 

Clearly, the partnership we enjoy with the Baylor Health Care System and Health Texas Provider Network is paying off for and in our community.