Mother Lode of Health Care Information
National Center for Health Care Statistics
One purpose of this blog is to share information source for those who are in the biotech and medtech industries. There is no doubt that the United States is the greatest consumer of health care resources. Each year the Health, United States series presents national trends in health statistics. This report is just out. The report includes an executive summary, highlights, a chartbook, trend tables, extensive appendixes, and an index. If you want to solve health care problems, address unmet needs and assess emerging health care issues, here is the place to look.
So what are the leading causes of death in the United States, how much is spent on health care and who is paying .......
For a bird's eye view read the Executive Summary.
Of interest is the Special Feature focusing on health care use and expenditures for adults age 55-64. Since 1995 the average annual rate of increase for prescription drug expenditures was higher than for any other type of health expenditure (table 122), indicating the growing importance of prescription drugs. The baby boomers are becoming the leading consumers of prescription drugs.
This year there is a new section on health care utilization that includes:
- use of mammography and Pap tests;
- visits to physician offices and outpatient departments;
- injury-related visits by children to emergency departments; and
- insertion of cardiac stents.
Not surprisingly the leading cause of death is heart disease. In the section on cardiac stents it concluded that 70 percent of survival improvement in heart attack is attributed to CABG, PTCA, the intracoronary stent, and other procedures developed during the last 30 years. However what is most surprising from this table is that there are 34,000 deaths a year in the US from septicemia!
