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

Gao ID: HRD-85-23 May 24, 1985

GAO reviewed the extent to which outpatient surgery is being practiced in Department of Defense (DOD) hospitals.

GAO found that: (1) military hospitals have not generally adopted outpatient surgery programs as a means of reducing health care costs; (2) about 65 percent of the cases it reviewed could have been treated on an outpatient basis; (3) expenditures by the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services (CHAMPUS) could have been reduced by up to $3.6 million annually if outpatient surgery programs were implemented at the hospitals reviewed; and (4) its estimate of the number of patients and procedures suitable for outpatient surgery may be conservative because it did not include certain procedures performed on an outpatient basis by nonfederal health care providers. GAO also found that military hospital commanders have not encouraged the implementation of outpatient surgery programs because they believe that: (1) patient population characteristics limit the potential for outpatient surgery; (2) operating room and other facilities at some hospitals could limit full development of outpatient surgery; and (3) outpatient surgery programs could adversely affect hospital staffing by reducing the number of inpatients. In addition, GAO and hospital commanders believe that outpatient surgery programs may not result in savings to the DOD direct-care system because: (1) while CHAMPUS is centrally funded and administered, the direct-care system is funded and administered by the military services; and (2) patients who would have been treated under CHAMPUS could instead be treated under the direct-care system, resulting in increased costs.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: David P. Baine Team: General Accounting Office: Human Resources Division Phone: (202) 512-7101


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