In this NextGen Healthcare Summit episode with Steve Santangelo of Garner Health, he delves into healthcare costs heading toward an unsustainable threshold where nearly 9% of company revenue will go toward benefits packages—the same percentage that contributed to GM's financial crisis in 2008. Data analysis reveals that which individual doctor a patient sees has the greatest impact on healthcare costs, with significant variations in quality and expense that don't necessarily correlate with each other.

• Top-performing doctors maintain complication rates around 5% for major surgeries while bottom-performing doctors approach 20%
• Approximately one-third of all healthcare procedures are deemed medically unnecessary
• Basic office visits cost around $100 with top doctors versus $250 with lower performers
• Traditional methods of evaluating doctor performance are highly inaccurate
• More granular assessment of doctor performance includes factors like tendency to jump to surgery, techniques used, complication rates, and setting choices
• Employers can save approximately 27% by directing employees to higher-quality providers
• Current provider directories are only about 27% accurate, creating barriers to finding good doctors
• AI and machine learning can help clean provider directories and deliver real-time information
• Using incentives to encourage patients to see high-quality doctors creates better outcomes while reducing costs
• Implementing these approaches can reduce employer healthcare spend by approximately 12%