Doctors Urge Their Colleagues To Quit Doing Worthless Tests
April 04, 2012
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/04/04/149978690/doctors-urge-their-colleagues-to-quit-doing-worthless-tests
Nine national medical groups are launching a campaign called Choosing Wisely http://www.choosingwisely.org to get U.S. doctors to back off on 45 diagnostic tests, procedures and treatments that often may do patients no good.
Many involve imaging tests such as CT scans, MRIs and X-rays.
Stop doing them, the groups say, for most cases of back pain, or on patients who come into the emergency room with a headache or after a fainting spell, or just because somebody’s about to undergo surgery.
And here’s one that raises some tricky questions: Most patients who are debilitated with advanced cancer shouldn’t get more chemotherapy.
Harvard economist David Cutler estimates that a third of what this country spends on health care could safely be dispensed with.
“That’s certainly the number we use,” Dr. Steven Weinberger, CEO of the American College of Physicians, tells Shots. “Most of us feel something like $750 billion or so could be eliminated from the system out of the $2.5 trillion or so that we spend on health care.”
Weinberger says unneeded diagnostic tests probably account for $250 billion.
Proponents of the campaign are aware they’re wading into dangerous waters.
“There will be some … that may demonize this campaign and infer the R-word — rationing,” Daniel Wolfson of the ABIM Foundation wrote in December when the campaign was launched.
But rationing is the denial of care that patients need, Wolfson points out.
The Choosing Wisely campaign aims to reduce care that has no value.