Chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, and COPD affect roughly 60% of Americans, according to the CDC, and account for 70% of deaths in the US.

This is not only costly to patients, but it also creates an enormous financial burden on our healthcare system. According to CMS, 90% of our nation’s $4.1 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures are for people with 1 or more chronic conditions.

However, while healthcare spending continues to rise each year, health outcomes continue to get worse, leading to many experts becoming more vocal about rethinking where spending should be allocated to do the best.

For decades, public health policy experts have known that investing in prevention saves lives and money. In 2021, the CDC invested $403 million into preventative lifestyle change programs for targeted communities. Their evaluation found that over an 11-year period, a $2.50 investment per capita would return $6.90.

The problem has not been lacking knowledge of the benefits of prevention, but rather misaligned incentives for care providers. The reality is that there are financial and economic considerations when determining where to invest resources, which has led to most healthcare services centered around “sick care.”

In a recent editorial in Forbes, Anand Parekh, author of Prevention First, wrote about the two actions that would most significantly change the paradigm on chronic disease care, “change the incentives and scale evidence-based prevention interventions.”

The tide is shifting. Value-Based care models have emerged as an alternative to the traditional “fee-for-service” reimbursement, instead promoting quality of care over quantity.

Lifestyle change programs like the CDC’s National Diabetes Prevention Program have shown to be very effective at reducing diabetes. A 10-year follow-up study of program participants showed a 32% reduction in T2D, and those that did develop T2D delayed the onset for 4 years. With the average healthcare spending for a patient with diabetes at $16,750/year, this shows prevention is a great investment.

The other way we can improve our healthcare spending is to detect chronic diseases early when they can be treated and avoid costly complications.

For example, the average cost of a heart attack is $21,500 per hospital stay. Preventive tests like Prevencio’s HART CVE can determine a patient’s 1-year risk for heart attack with 86% accuracy, and for less than $300!

By allocating financial resources to prevention and early detection, we will be able to deliver care that leads to healthier patients at a lower cost, a win-win for everyone.

About Prevencio

Prevencio is revolutionizing cardiovascular care with affordable, accessible, and highly accurate personalized blood tests.

Prevencio’s HART AI-driven blood tests are a breakthrough in cardiac care and prevention, employing AI to produce test panels of multiple proteins and clinical variables, combined with an algorithm to create a cardiovascular score.

HART CVE- prognostic blood test for 1-year risk of heart attack (MI), stroke or cardiac death (MACE or major adverse cardiovascular events). Yielding an accuracy of 86%, HART CVE assesses four cardiac blood proteins in a machine learning (AI) algorithm to calculate a patient- specific risk score.

To learn more or order test kits, visit prevenciomed.com, or call (425) 576-1200.