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Improving Care for the Chronically Ill:

Team Care is Cost-Effective Care

Interdisciplinary team care clearly benefits patients and providers, but it also has the potential to produce significant cost savings to the health care system. Health care for older adults with chronic illnesses is expensive. In the United States, 125 million people are living with chronic illnesses;7 they account for approximately three-fourths of total healthcare spending,8 and costs are rising.

Older adults are particularly hard hit; the 65 percent of Medicare recipients who have two or more chronic illnesses account for 95 percent of all Medicare spending.9 Despite these high expenditures, the Institute of Medicine reports that over half of patients with various chronic diseases, including diabetes, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and depression, are managed inadequately.10

These facts make widespread implementation of the GIT-P team care models essential, especially if they can deliver on the promise of producing cost savings for the health care system. Next: Making Team Care the Standard of Care ›
7- Adams K, Corrigan JM (Eds). Priority areas for national action: Transforming health care quality. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. 2003
8- Hoffman C, Rice D, Sung HY. Persons with chronic conditions: their prevalence and costs. JAMA. 1996;276(18):1473-1479.
9- Wolff JL, Starfield B, Anderson G. Prevalence, expenditures, and complications of multiple chronic conditions in the elderly. Arch Intern Med. 2002;162(20):2269-2276.
10- Institute of Medicine. The chasm in quality: Select indicators from recent reports. Crossing the Quality Chasm: The IOM Health Care Quality Initiative. http://www.iom.edu/?id=14991