Many people assume that the lack of pro-active testing for every possible problem in medicine is simply done as a cost savings measure. Patients will sometimes complain to me that their insurance won’t cover a periodic full-body MRI, or a routine stress test, or blood testing in the absence of any symptoms for this disease or that. And there is some validity to this critique: it’s certainly true that insurers like to spend as little money as possible on patients. But to be fair, there is another side to the argument, which is that – contrary to what many assume – testing for problems that aren’t apparent can sometimes in fact be harmful.
This is a difficult topic to grasp, so I’m going to break this post down into two parts. Today, I will outline some of the logic behind why tests can sometimes create more problems than they prevent. In next week’s post, I will give a few actual anecdotes from my career that demonstrate the point.
How could it possibly be that ordering tests to screen for health problems can be harmful?
