Axe to health tests
Wasteful medical procedures may be cut for savings
DOCTORS are offering to discard more than 200 routinely ordered procedures to save hundreds of millions of dollars from Australia’s health system which they believe will have minimal impact on the health of patients.
The Royal Australian College of Physicians is drawing up a hit list of medical tests, procedures and treatments, which are ordered for thousands of patients each day they say they can live without or are no longer relevant. The Abbott Government has been briefed on the RACP’s “Evolve” plan as it tries to rein in health spending after ditching plans for a GP copayment.
Despite some of the procedures being ordered more than 4 million times last year alone, the RACP believes many have become obsolete and the benefit to patients do not justify the expense to taxpayers.
Each of the RACP’s 41 speciality medical groups is now reviewing evidence supporting procedures to finalise a list this year of “ineffective, overused or inappropriate” interventions to be cut.
In one example, doctors will be told not to measure vitamin D levels in patients with cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune disease after the tests were carried out 4.3 million times last year at a cost of $ 142.9 million but with little proven benefit. Other procedures already earmarked for the chopping block include:
Spinal injections of steroids to treat non- specific back pain. Almost 43,000 of these procedures were undertaken last year costing $ 3.8 million, despite evidence suggesting they are no more beneficial than a placebo;
Thyroid ultrasound for patients with abnormal thyroid function. More than 284,000 thyroid ultrasounds were ordered last year costing almost $ 28.3 million;
Removal of the parathyroid glands in a patient’s neck to combat hypercalcaemia which is undertaken more than 3000 times a year but may not improve the quality of life for many patients.
RACP president Professor Nick Talley said clinicians were best placed to reduce inappropriate spending so the limited health budget could better focus on priorities.
“It will be a great benefit to all – to the profession, to the community and, I suspect, the Government will like it, too,” Prof Talley said.