Gesele Henderson

The Overuse of MRI Scans Because of Defensive Measures

In the US, the rate in which Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans, or MRIs, are being used is increasing and therefore contributing to the ever-growing health care costs. (COM) MRIs in the US have proven to be more expensive and issued more often compared to other developed countries, so when something is more expensive and used more often this obviously creates a larger expense. The issue is that not all of the scans that are ordered are deemed medically necessary. The overuse of MRIs in the US is therefore resulting in an unnecessary increase of expenses due the physicians’ tendency to practice defensive medicine.
Defensive medicine is a term that refers to when a physician orders a test, procedure, or additional consultations in fear of getting sued (AP). Actually, a study showed that more than 75% of physicians in the US would encounter a medical malpractice claim during the course of their career (AP). So as this statistic shows, in the US physicians are consistently …show more content…
The guidelines would consider certain subgroups, exceptions, and would compare different health options with the corresponding health outcomes. Because of the constant development of new medical technology and discoveries these guidelines would have to be revised when new evidence is found. But, overall these guidelines would ensure a standard of care in which physicians had to adhere to. This would also warrant that if a patient wanted to bring forth a medical malpractice suit, they would have to demonstrate that the physician did not follow the evidence based guidelines. This would allow a physician to have a “safe-harbor” if they had documentation and proof that they did follow these guidelines, which therefore would reduce the need for physicians to practice defensive