Physician referral patterns ripe for scrutiny
Compliance Monitor, February 1, 2012
When is a general practitioner's referral of a patient to a specialist an appropriate one that will likely lead to better outcomes, and when is it a categorical waste of money? Even worse, when is it something that provokes an unnecessarily harmful intervention involving more radiation, more specialists, false positives, or even useless surgery?
According to a January 26 HealthLeaders Media article, these questions surround the latest quality issue emerging from the dramatic increase in referrals to specialists, highlighted by Harvard Medical School researchers. In a study, they pose even more questions about whether and when a generalist should recommend a patient see another doctor.
The report, by Michael Barnett, MD, Zirui Song, and Bruce Landon, MD, and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, looks at a sample of data from nearly one million ambulatory visits to primary care providers collected by two respected surveys. They found the number of referrals to a specialist doubled from 1999 to 2009, while during the decade before, rates were stable.
"That fact alone has significant implications for the cost of care and care patterns, because the referral isn't a single visit to a specialist," Landon explains in an interview with HealthLeaders Media. "It potentially opens up a whole cascade of testing and treatments and hospitalizations and procedures, and additional referrals.
Read more on the HealthLeaders Media website.
Related Products
Most Popular
- Articles
-
- Math can be tricky: TJC corrects ABHR storage requirement
- Air control equals infection control
- Don't forget the three checks in medication administration
- Residency coordinators’ responsibilities
- Study: Shorter shifts reduces residents’ attentional failures
- Note similarities and differences between HCPCS, CPT® codes
- RPA Subscriber Exclusive: February issue of Residency Program Alert now available
- The consequences of an incomplete medical record
- OSHA HazCom updates include labeling, SDS requirements
- Practice the six rights of medication administration
- E-mailed
-
- Air control equals infection control
- OSHA HazCom updates include labeling, SDS requirements
- Tip: Note new thyroid imaging codes
- Tim Porter-O'Grady sounds off
- Skills of effective case managers
- Q: Can you clarify the reporting of dates on the plan of care for diagnosis onset and exacerbation?
- Q&A: Defining Subacute
- Q&A: Are colleges sending students to our facility for rotations business associates?
- Note similarities and differences between HCPCS, CPT® codes
- Fracture coding in ICD-10-CM requires greater specificity
- Searched