The Evidence Gap: Weight the Costs of a CT Scan's Looks Inside the Heart

The latest feature of The New York Times series, The Evidence Gap, delves into controversial issue of emerging and cutting edge technologies in healthcare. The article, “Weighing the Costs of a CT Scan’s Look Inside the heart,” offers the pros and cons of a new cardiology medical device. The CT Scan can provide cardiologists with a new way of looking into patients’ arteries, a boasting reputation of offering cutting edge technology as well as extra revenue. On the other hand, the new CT Scan exposes patients to large doses of radiation. It is costly machine—$1 million—and an expensive procedure that has yet to yield better results.

According to The New York Times, this new CT Scan controversy showcases the American healthcare system as: “faith in innovation, often driven by financial incentives [which] encourages American doctors and hospitals to adopt new technologies even without proof that they work better than older techniques.” The CT Scan is just one of many costly procedures that leads to hundreds of billions of superfluously spent dollars, with no justification.

An independent review organization (IRO) is helpful in a situation like this because they back their decisions with evidence-based medicine. Furthermore, they weigh the benefits of a procedure—detecting heart disease—against its risks—high radiation exposure levels. All in all, an IRO can decide whether its medically necessary for a patient to receive a particular treatment, elimating unnecessary procedures, reducing the nation’s superfluous spending on healthcare, while making sure patient safety is the top priority.

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