Yearly Medicare Mammography Spending on the Rise

Developments in medical imaging technology, such as low-dose computed tomography scans, have led to improvements in health outcomes for patients. Women at-risk of breast cancer have benefited from these innovations, but data shows that mammograms integrated with new technology have not directly resulted in better detection rates of early stage tumors.

However, expenses for these exams have grown considerably in the last decade, as Medicare spending has risen by roughly 50 percent since the early 2000s, HealthImaging reported. A recent study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute analyzed the mammography utilization rates, cancer detection and spending among Medicare beneficiaries aged 66 years or older.

Led by Cary Gross, M.D., director of the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research Center at the Yale University Cancer Center, the researchers focused on two time periods: 2001-2002 and 2008-2009. The total number of patients in the study population included more than 270,000 individuals.

Increases in costs for mammograms
According to FierceMedicalImaging, Gross and his colleagues found that the cost per patient associated with breast cancer screening had risen by 47 percent between 2001 and 2009. Throughout the length of the study, the researchers noted that screening costs for one patient increased from $76 to $112, and that annual Medicare spending for mammography had gone up to $962 million from $666 million.

“We need further studies to identify which women will benefit from screening, and how to screen effectively and efficiently. But we cannot simply adopt new technologies because they theoretically are superior – the health system cannot sustain it, and more importantly our patients deserve a sustained effort to determine which approaches to screening are effective and which ones are not,” said Gross, quoted by FierceMedicalImaging.

While spending had almost doubled, the researchers reported that early detection rates for breast cancer tumors had experienced little in the way of improvements. Additionally, they discovered that 32.6 percent of women over the age of 75 were still undergoing mammograms, a large percentage despite recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to forego the procedure at that specific age limit.

Breast cancer screening has been a recent trending topic of conversation among health care providers who specialize in diagnostic radiology. Gross and his team did find a change in the utilization of digital mammograms, as usage of the new form of technology increased from 2 percent to approximately 30 percent over the study’s time period. Although costs have risen, hopefully this is a sign that better scan results are on the horizon.

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