Quit Wasting My Healthcare

The Doctor is In: Reasons #3 – #5 for Healthcare Overutilization

In a continuation of this series on the reasons for healthcare overutilization, let’s examine advertising, malpractice and technology:

3.        Marketing to Physicians

The pharmaceutical industry as a whole spends $10,000 on each and every physician in America marketing the latest medications—more than $7 billion annually.  Physicians are often faced with a decision on which medication to prescribe where they have a choice between a generic and a brand-name drug.  With few comparative studies on the effectiveness of one drug versus another, pharmaceutical companies emphasize favorable results for their particular brand-name medication knowing that physicians don’t have any data to refute their claims.  One wonders why the default choice of most physicians would not be the generic in these situations.

4.        Medical Malpractice Law Suits

To guard themselves against medical malpractice law suits, many physicians practice defensive medicine—ordering extra tests and procedures to “cover themselves” in case the patient decides to sue.  The extent to which this practice exists is somewhat controversial, but being sued is on the mind of many physicians and can have an effect on their practice patterns.

5.        Patient Preference for the “Newest Thing”

Doctors often do what their patients ask them to do and patients often want the latest test or newest procedure.  For example, I recently spoke with a urologist in the Dallas area who said the main reason his fellow urologists perform robotic prostate surgery is because their patients want to use the robot.  He said the patients do leave the hospital one or two days earlier compared to the traditional technique, but the outcomes and complication rates for the two different methods are very similar.  The robot costs over $1,100 more than the traditional technique—and that’s before factoring in the $1.2M price for the robot itself.[i]