April 2020

By the Numbers
For The Record
Vol. 32 No. 3 P. 34

1/4
A JAMA Network study estimates about this fraction of total health care spending in the United States is waste, with a price tag ranging from $760 billion to $935 billion. The estimated annual cost of waste includes $265.6 billion for administrative complexity (eg, billing and coding waste, physician time spent reporting on quality measures).

$41,179
According to the ransomware incident response firm Coveware, the average ransom payment was $41,198 in the third quarter of 2019, but doubled to $84,116 by the fourth quarter, with a median payment of this amount. The large increase in ransom amounts is a result of ransomware gangs focusing on attacking large enterprises.

50
Patients who use online patient portals are this percentage more likely to get a flu shot, have their blood pressure checked, or have their cholesterol checked, compared with those who don’t use portals, according to a Penn Medicine study about the impact of portal use on patients’ preventive health behavior and chronic health outcomes, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

89
Black Book Research found this percentage of all hospitals surveyed reports cutting transcription costs in half or more while improving the transparency of dictation and transcription processes within one year of implementing end-to-end coding, clinical documentation improvement, and transcription software tools. Additionally, 94% of providers realized operational efficiencies without impacting clinician workflows.

1 in 3
About this number of Americans report currently or formerly wearing a fitness tracker such as a Fitbit or smartwatch (34%) or tracking their health statistics using an app on their smartphone or tablet (32%). According to a Gallup poll, 76% of wearable fitness tracker users say they find them very or somewhat helpful, and 82% of health app users say they find them very or somewhat helpful.

55
In hospitals over 200 beds, coder productivity increased this percentage from the third quarter of 2017 to the third quarter of 2019, according to a Black Book Research survey on artificial intelligence–powered coding solutions.

16.2
The average downtime from a ransomware attack increased from 12.1 days in the third quarter of 2019 to this number of days in the fourth quarter, due to an increase in attacks on large enterprises, which have complex systems that take much longer to restore, according to a Coveware report.

$423
According to a Black Book Research survey, the estimated cost of a data breach by the respondent hospital organizations with actual breaches in 2019 averaged this amount per record.

90
A Black Book Research survey found this percentage of hospitals confirm documented quality improvements and increases in case mix index within six months of clinical documentation improvement implementation.