Nagging Patients Aren't to Blame for Overtesting in Medicine
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New research has found that patients make almost no unreasonable requests for medical treatment, undermining the tendency by doctors to blame higher health-care costs on the demands of those they care for.
Only 1 percent of cancer patients ask for a clinically inappropriate medical intervention, according to a paper published Thursday in JAMA Oncology, part of the network of publications affiliated with the Journal of the American Medical Association. Suggestions were considered unreasonable when surveyed doctors ranked them between one and three on a 10-point scale in which the highest mark represented a request that was the most appropriate.