Dive Brief:
- Physicians commonly believe that patients are playing a role in the rising costs of healthcare by demanding or requesting unnecessary tests or treatments, but such requests are fulfilled at a very low rate, finds a new study published in JAMA Oncology.
- The study finds that physicians are also concerned about costs associated with doing additional tests and treatments to avoid medical malpractice lawsuits. However, malpractice and defensive medicine are only responsible for a minor percentage of increasing healthcare costs, the authors say.
- The data comes from 5,050 patient/clinician encounters that took place in three oncology outpatient facilities during the timeframe of October 2013 to June 2014.
Dive Insight:
The data found that of the 5,050 patient/clinician encounters, just 440 involved a patient demand or request, and that clinicians deemed them appropriate in all but 50 of the cases. Of those 50 inappropriate demands, clinicians complied with just seven.
Of the 440 patient demands:
- 216 (49.1%) were for imaging studies
- 68 (15.5%) were for palliative treatments, excluding chemotherapy or radiation
- and 60 (13.6%) were for laboratory tests
The study concludes that since inappropriate demands occur in only 1% of patient/clinician encounters, and clinicians comply with very few, "demanding patients" are infrequent and unlikely to account for a significant proportion of rising healthcare costs—at least in oncology. Whether those findings can be extrapolated to healthcare in general is something that will require more robust study.