It is sincerely a boon that concentration on these measures has kept children out of the hospital. However this is not a cost cutting measure since no players have changed. The staffing in the hospital is the same. Perhaps there are lower charges to insurers for the hospitalization of asthmatics but this will be made up by room for other admissions some more costly than asthma treatment. In reality the expense of care is tied to the number of professionals and support staff that needs to be paid. The outreach program probably also involves extra personnel adding not subtracting cost. If overall this does lead to a reduction in admissions, which is doubtful, and hence revenue for the hospital, you can bet the next negotiation with insurers will include higher fees to cover this loss. In other businesses if customer flow slows down people are laid off. Since a hospital does not have this flexibility the number of employees remains constant. Usually any savings in such institutions is in its administration. If a hospital could function with less workers in these departments then we would be getting somewhere. As it is the clinical workforce has been stretched thin and no changes occur by reducing admission unless it is more massive. No one is saying that programs that keep people healthy do not have important value but to tout them as cost saving is wrong. If this kind of camouflaged approach to the real source of hospital expenditures is continued we will not bring the bottom line if health care costs under control.

OETKB - this IS a cost-saving measure. It has saved the costs of multiple hospital admissions. The little boy referenced in the story had spent time in intensive care. There is the cost of medication and monitoring, along with the increased costs to insurance companies for each ER visit. There are also associated costs, such as lost work time by parents when children are sick, lost school time that means children are held back and need remedial courses, and the also the likelihood that a healthy child will learn more efficiently than a chronically ill child and will be more likely to finish high school and possibly go on for more education at the Community College or College level. The true goal of public health is prevention, and this is a prime example of how health care money should be spent.