A question about Drs. tied to hospitals?
 

I just thought about this today. I have noticed that when I go to Drs. that are tied to the Hospitals, I guess I want to say employees with their own offices they seem to only want to run test and not treat. I am wondering if the hospitals are pushing them to run the test due to the money for them and not focus on the treating of the patient or diagnosing if the test don't show anything.

I had to call my Surgeons office today to make an appt. due to not getting a call from him on my test results. He said he'd run this test which had nothing to do with what I went to see him for and then we'd regroup. Well if I hadn't have called we wouldn't be regrouping. He belongs to a group that belongs to the hospital. I hope I am explaining this good enough.

Any thoughts on this??

Ada

It's probably a bit of both... in my experience the majority of DR's want to help so if they need to run additional tests to rule things out or in then I'm all for it... b/c wouldnt you rather they did TOO many tests than TOO few? It gives the dr. a little extra info to go off of. But as far as the hospitals are concerned -- hospitals are in it for the $$, so don't put it past them to push 'their' drs to run certain 'extra' tests. But I'm not sure how you could prove it... IDK hope I helped a little.

Hi Ada.

Hmmm, that is a very good question! I don't have the answer, but it would make sense. My PM is with a hospital. He has not requested any tests (only three Sympathetic Nerve Blocks). Maybe its because my other doctors have already ordered them (EMG, MRI, bloodwork, etc)? I'm curious to read other's posts....

Kim

I believe it is called "defensive practice" in other words cover your but to make sure you don't get sued for anything. I recently read an article that indicated that this was one of the contributing factors to increased costs of health care in the USA. Barring any tort reforms many physicians have little choice but to run all the tests to protect themselves. Perhaps hospital affiliated physicians have to do so even more so due to administration rules?

MsL