Implementing Outpatient Surgery Programs in Military Hospitals Can Reduce DoD's Health Care Costs

摘要

Outpatient (or same day) surgery has received widespread attention from nonfederal health care providers as a way to reduce health care costs. GAO found that military hospitals have made limited use of outpatient surgery to reduce military health care costs. At the six military hospitals reviewed, GAO estimates that in 1982 about 5,600 or about 65 percent, of about 8,600 inpatient surgeries that had outpatient surgery potential could have been performed on an outpatient basis. Military surgeons helped GAO make this determination. GAO believes that if these inpatient surgeries had been done on an outpatient basis, hospital beds and other resources at these six hospitals would have been available and could have been used to treat patients who had been referred to the civilian sector under the Department of Defense (DOD)-financial Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services. Based on (1) the private sector's experience that outpatient surgery is a safe and cost-effective alternative to impatient surgery for many surgical procedures and (2) GAO's findings concerning the potential for wider use of such surgery in the military services, GAO recommends that the Secretary of Defense direct the Assistant Secretary (Health Affairs) to develop a DOD-wide policy on outpatient surgery programs in military hospitals where analyses show that such programs would reduce DOD's total health care costs. (Author)