Waste not want not

Two strikingly different news items arrived in my inbox about the same time this morning. The first one brought news of a PricewaterhouseCoopers report that more than half of health care spending is wasteful. As in $1.2 trillion worth. By any metric that's a a lot, even if the underlying analysis and resulting numbers are kind of shaky. As a PwC director says:

[O]ne person's waste might be another person's profit. It does make it hard to reform and change.

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC), which provides free electronic health records and Health Information Exchanges to all physicians in three Massachusetts communities, reported the following:

Thanks to efficient project management, funds remain from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts grant originally intended to [run out in June.] Using the surplus, MAeHC is offering the participating medical practices the option to continue...until the end of the year...in the health information exchange (HIE).

Congratulations to the MAeHC team on making the most of their $50 million grant. CEO Micky Tripathi was well-trained at Boston Consulting Group, where he learned to under promise and over deliver. Glad to see he hasn't forgotten what he learned! Next stop Washington?