Unfortunately, another distasteful – and likely more common than the authors estimate – assessment of the unethical behavior of physicians.
This is from JAMA. It’s a health-insurance carrier records review regarding differences in rate of ordering nuclear stress testing and stress echocardiography depending on the cardiologist financial conflict-of-interest. Basically, they were asking the question – if the ordering cardiologist had a financial interest in the imaging performance and interpretation, would they order more tests?
Sadly, as you might imagine, the answer is yet. If the physician billed technical and professional fees for the nuclear stress, the adjusted OR for ordering a nuclear stress was 2.3 compared to physicians who had no financial interests in the nuclear stress. For stress echocardiography, the adjusted OR was 12.6.
I have no doubt the same sort of thing happens with neurologists who own their own MRI facilities, etc. Money corrupts physicians just the same as any other human being.
“Association Between Physician Billing and Cardiac Stress Testing Patterns Following Coronary Revascularization”
jama.ama-assn.org/content/306/18/1993