nuclear-news

Doctors who own radiation stress machines order more tests on healthy patients

“We have to remember that unnecessary testing puts patients at
unnecessary risk of exposure to radiation …

Doctors Who Own Stress Machines More Likely to Order Heart Test,    By Pat Wechsler Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) –– Doctors who own and bill for nuclear cardiac stress-test technology are twice as likely to order the procedure as those who aren’t paid for it, researchers said.

The widest variation in whether a doctor prescribed a nuclear stress test, which uses radiation to track blood flow, occurred when patients had no symptoms of coronary disease following bypass surgery or other heart procedures, according to a study published today in the Journal
of the American Medical Association. Physicians who owned the equipment ordered tests in 10 percent of the cases versus 4.3 percent
for those who didn’t……

When physicians had the discretion because patients were asymptomatic,
reimbursement made the doctors more likely to order the tests,” Shah,
a cardiologist at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North
Carolina, said in a telephone interview. “There’s an expanding role
for this kind of imaging and our findings would lead us to conclude
that the need to recoup an investment in the equipment could be a
factor in that growth.”

The American College of Cardiology recommends no early stress testing
after these procedures if a patient has no symptoms….
The average retail price of a nuclear camera is about $225,000,
according to the Orlando Medical News in Orlando, Florida, and other
medical equipment publications. For each procedure, a doctor may be
paid about $1,000, according to Florida cardiologists surveyed by the
journal.

‘Unnecessary Risk’

“We have to remember that unnecessary testing puts patients at
unnecessary risk of exposure to radiation …
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-08/doctors-who-own-stress-machines-more-likely-to-order-heart-test.html

November 10, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, USA