Unnecessary medical tests.

Kevin, M. D. writes about unnecessary medical testing.  Via this week’s Grand Rounds, always a good read. 

One of the links clicks through to an analysis of Dick Cheney’s annual exam — which of the listed tests are and aren’t evidence-based needs for routine preventive screening.  I thought it was a well-crafted post.  Part of the over-testing problem is created by the media’s renormalization of what tests ought to be done.  And Dick Cheney’s annual exam got press.   Another link from Kevin’s post goes to an article written by a doctor who was sued because he discussed the risks and benefits of a test with a patient.  The plaintiff’s lawyer argued that the doc, then a resident, should not have given the patient the opportunity to exercise informed consent; i.e., that he should have just ordered the test without giving the patient the choice.

Doctors are not always the bad guys when it comes to the limitations of patient choice.   Many of them must see every patient, or even every healthy individual who comes for a consultation, as a potential litigant.  In a culture like this I can hardly blame them.