Can “Nudge Units” Help Build Better Health Systems?

Americans spend a lot of money on prescription drugs. Drug spending could reach as high as $610 billion by 2021, and the price of medications continues to rise. That’s why it’s increasingly important to encourage doctors to prescribe generic options—which are as effective as brand names, but much less expensive. These efforts were unsuccessful for some time at Penn Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania’s health system, but in May 2016 Penn became one of the best-performing generic prescribers in the country. Seemingly overnight, the health system went from prescribing 75 percent generic medications to 98 percent. Among the top 75 drugs, this saved $32 million over two and a half years. What changed? ….[READ]