Surgeons to Congress: Don't beat up on imaging services

By Jason Millman |11/1/12 6:06 AM EST
Updated 11/1/12 8:47 AM EST

Yesterday, several lawmakers released a Government Accountability Office report that said physician self-referrals — ordering tests on a patient that are then done by the referring physician — drove up Medicare spending by about $109 million in 2010. A few hours later, the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons put out the counterpoint: imaging services — the kind the GAO report looked at — are still pretty important. “The AAOS believes that the provision of in-office imaging services is critically important for musculoskeletal patients and can lead to greater patient adherence to treatment plans and improved outcomes,” AAOS president John R. Tongue said in a statement. The group “believes that wasteful spending in Medicare should be addressed,” the statement said, but “[s]ignificant technological advances have been made in our field so that patients can receive timely and accessible screenings from the comfort of their doctor’s office. We believe that any restriction on this convenience would threaten the quality of care being delivered to our patients.”

--The Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance also not surprisingly weighed in, arguing that the GAO ignored MedPAC’s finding that per capita imaging utilization has decreased. “Qualified physicians regardless of their specialties should be able to provide appropriate imaging services to their patients,” MITA Executive Director Gail Rodriguez said in a statement. “Efforts to limit physicians would threaten patient access to health care providers and technologies while obstructing coordinated care models that have been proven to lower costs and improve care.”