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Medicare Beneficiaries Not Getting Treatments

Wed, 11/15/2000 - 12:00am — Karen Stevenson
Description: 

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that many Medicare beneficiaries are not getting treatments like mammograms for breast cancer survivors and vision tests for patients with diabetes. The study looked at 345,253 Medicare patients aged 65 or older and found that less than two thirds of them were getting generally recommended procedures. Blacks, poor people, and people living in rural areas were least likely to be getting recommended treatments. Researchers did not investigate the reason for this undertreatment, but said that it could be due to physicians who did not order the right treatments, patients who did not follow the physicians recommendations, or discrimination by doctors. They also suggested that the lack of preventative and diagnostic treatments may have led to worse outcomes, such as the higher hospitalization rate for congestive heart failure that black patients have over white patients. The multi-specialty physician panel that conducted the study was led by Steven M. Asch, MD, MPH, of RAND.

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that many Medicare beneficiaries are not getting treatments like mammograms for breast cancer survivors and vision tests for patients with diabetes. The study looked at 345,253 Medicare patients aged 65 or older and found that less than two thirds of them were getting generally recommended procedures. Blacks, poor people, and people living in rural areas were least likely to be getting recommended treatments. Researchers did not investigate the reason for this undertreatment, but said that it could be due to physicians who did not order the right treatments, patients who did not follow the physicians recommendations, or discrimination by doctors. They also suggested that the lack of preventative and diagnostic treatments may have led to worse outcomes, such as the higher hospitalization rate for congestive heart failure that black patients have over white patients. The multi-specialty physician panel that conducted the study was led by Steven M. Asch, MD, MPH, of RAND.