Health Affairs

Editor’s note: In the April issue of Health Affairs, Jean Mitchell reported that “self-referring” urologists, who billed Medicare for both prostate biopsies and the associated surgical pathology services, charged Medicare for more specimens per prostate biopsy than non-self-referring urologists sent to independent pathology providers. Additionally, the regression-adjusted cancer detection rate was higher for men treated... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: In October 2009, Health Affairs published two papers on factors driving imaging utilization. One paper, by Jacqueline Baras and Laurence Baker, analyzes the relationship between MRI supply and care for fee-for-service Medicare patients with low back pain. It finds that increases in MRI supply are related to higher use of both low back MRI and... Read the rest of this entry »