Medicare pays billions of dollars for wasteful procedures -study

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Medicare pays billions of dollars for wasteful procedures -study

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - As many as 42 percent of U.S. Medicare patients were subjected to procedures providing little if any medical benefit, costing the government program up to $8.5 billion in wasteful spending, according to a study published on Monday. The research, reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, is the first large-scale analysis of what Medicare spends on procedures widely viewed as unnecessary, from advanced imaging for simple lower back pain to pre-operative chest X-rays and putting stents in patients with stable heart disease. The study looked at the frequency at which doctors used 26 such procedures in 2009. It builds on the growing body of work in the field of evidence-based medicine, which applies rigorous scientific scrutiny to common procedures.

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