Link Confirmed Between Disjointed Care, Unnecessary Procedures
BALTIMORE, June 11 (UPI) — Lack of continuous care led to 14.7 percent of Medicare patients receiving unnecessary diagnostic, screening, monitoring or treatment procedures, according to a study of claims for more than 1.2 million people.
Researchers considered a previously validated set of 19 overused procedures when reviewing five percent of Medicare claims from 2008, finding that the better a patient’s continuity of care, the less chance they would have one of the procedures.
“Conservative estimates suggest that 30 percent of all health care spending nationwide — roughly $600 billion annually — could be eliminated without any decrease in health care quality,” said Max Romano, M.D., M.P.H, a medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a press release. “This research is important because it suggests that fractured patient care is related to this massive amount of overuse.”
Overused services were defined as those that can be provided without a clear medical basis. Examples of commonly overused procedures included X-rays, MRIs or antibiotics given for “simple respiratory infections,” Romano said.
According to the research, 14.7 percent of patients had at least one overused procedure; a higher continuity of care was associated with lower odds of having 6 of 13 diagnostic tests and all three therapeutic procedures considered overused.
The average Medicare patient annually has 13 medical visits, split among an average of two primary care physicians and five specialists.
“The scale of overuse is mindboggling,” said Romano. “Unfortunately, patients just don’t know which procedures are necessary and which aren’t. They have to put a lot of trust in the health care system and providers. The fragmented health care system may make it harder for their providers to make the best decisions.”
The study is published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
