Doctors And Self-Dealing

DOCTORS ARE NOT permitted to sell the medicine they prescribe, and for an excellent reason: It would be a conflict of interest, creating financial incentive for physicians to peddle drugs of little or no benefit to patients. So why should doctors be allowed to both order and administer MRIs, CT scans and other high-tech procedures that may or may not be needed and useful?

The answer is, they shouldn't. But doctors are engaging in so-called self-referrals in dramatically greater numbers and reaping the financial rewards. They may be adding billions to medical costs in added insurance premiums and taxes.

There is substantial evidence that doctors who own scanners order excessive scans. In 2009 The Post's Shankar Vedantam recounted the case of Urological Associates, a medical practice on the Iowa-Illinois border treating kidney stones and other ailments for which scans are common diagnostic tools. In the months after the urologists purchased their own CT scanner, the number of scans they ordered soared by more than 700 percent. Academic and government studies suggest similar behavior across the country.

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