The medical imaging industry, or at least its leading trade group, would have us believe it’s “unsettling” that pricey medical imaging procedures like CT scans and MRIs are on the decline.
To the contrary, it’s a welcome and somewhat rare sign that the U.S. health industry is actually getting something right, and that profits and the medical arms race aren’t trumping medicine — at least when it comes to imaging.
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A recent report from the Health Care Cost Institute found that radiology procedure volume dropped 5.4 percent in 2010 compared to the prior year among three health insurance companies that contributed data to the survey — Aetna, UnitedHealthcare and Humana, Aunt Minnie reported. The only other of 10 categories included in the survey that also dropped was visits to primary care physicians (5.2 percent).
Further, radiology was the only category that declined (2.7 percent) in outpatient procedure volume.
The report’s conclusions match up with an earlier report based on Medicare data that showed a significant slowdown in the advanced imaging market.
Predictably, the executive director of industry trade group Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance reacted to declining radiology volume with self-interest.
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“It’s unsettling to see downward trends in the use of medical imaging services when research continues to underscore the tremendous value of imaging and radiation therapy technology in improving outcomes and reducing costs for patients and the healthcare system,” said Gail Rodriguez.
Reducing costs? Not exactly.
Medical imaging has essentially been the poster child for the problem of overutilization in the expensive, technology-obsessed and often low-quality U.S. health system.
For example, the number of scanners per capita in the U.S. is seven times (for CT) and 2.5 times (for MRI) the average of France and Germany, according to a report from McKinsey & Company. “Given the direct correlation between CT and MRI scanners and the volume of the procedures they perform, we conclude that excess capacity translates to some $40 billion in additional costs to the U.S. health system,” the report states.
And let’s not even get started on the risk of radiation overdose, which can result in death, that comes from medical errors associated with diagnostic imaging procedures, well documented in a series of articles in The New York Times in recent years.
What’s more, executives in the radiology industry profess to not even being concerned about declining volume. “I’m not focused on the size of the market,” Scott Seidelmann, CEO of radiology provider Radisphere, told MedCity News late last year. “It’s not what I lose sleep over.”
“I don’t necessarily care if you cut it by 25 percent,” Seidelmann added. “It’s still an absolutely huge industry.”
Another data point from the Health Care Cost Institute illustrates why radiology procedures need to decline: Radiology experienced the highest growth in price per outpatient procedure in the survey.
Sure, the imaging industry is correct to point out that diagnostic imaging tests can do lots of good — reducing the need for surgery and helping doctors detect disease in the early stages, for example.
But lamenting that radiology volume is declining just shows that the medical imaging industry cares only about itself and its profits.
To put a finer point on it: A drop in imaging procedures is a problem for few besides those who make money from imaging. For everyone else, it represents one small way of slowing exploding U.S. health costs — and payers like health insurance companies and the federal government deserve credit for making it happen.
