Non-radiologists – physicians or otherwise – with
on-site imaging services are two-and-half times more likely to
order imaging than clinicians with no financial interest in
imaging, says
a study published in the July edition of the Journal of the
American College of Radiology.
The MEDLINE data-based meta-analysis, led by Ramsey K. Kilani,
MD of the Duke University Medical School in Durham, N.C., included
five studies considering nearly 77 million episodes of care. The
researchers found that non-radiologist self-referrers ordered
imaging from 1.6 to 4.5 times more than radiologist referrers, with
an average of 2.48 times more than radiologists. That translated
into a 59.7 percent of imaging being attributable to
self-referral.
SOURCE