Low-Cost, High-Volume Health Services Contribute The Most To Unnecessary Health Spending

An analysis of data for 2014 about forty-four low-value health services in the Virginia All Payer Claims Database revealed more than 586 million in unnecessary costs. Among these low-value services, those that were low and very low cost (538 or less per service) were delivered far more frequently than services that were high and very high cost (539 or more). The combined costs of the former group were nearly twice those of the latter (65 percent versus 35 percent).