New measures for health care productivity

The most productive part of medical care is treatment for cardiovascular disease, both acute conditions and risk factors.  Productivity estimates for acute cardiovascular diseases are $89,000 in aggregate — 79% of the total increase [in health care productivity from 1999 to 2012].

There has been very little progress over that same period in treating mental illness, arthritis, and musculoskeletal conditions.  How about this:?

Despite a vast increase in the number of people treated with drugs for mental illness, the population’s mental health showed essentially no change over time.

Overall medical care was increasing in productivity over that period by about 0.7% a year, still great stagnation territory as they say.

That is all from a new paper by David M. Cutler, Kaushik Ghosh, Kassandra Messer, Trivellore Raghunathan, Allison B. Rosen, and Susan T. Stewart.