Radiologists Lose? Medicare Won't cover "Virtual Colonoscopy"

About a year ago, I had written about Radiologists possibly encroaching the Gastroenterologists' income-turf with popularizing the "Virtual Colonscopy". Medicare just proved to be a spolier by deciding not to pay for those...

Two reasons Why Medicare will not cover:

1. No convincing evidence that virtual are any better than endoscopic colonoscopies in detecting lesions

2. When a virtual one detects a lesion, an endoscopic colonscopy will need to be done anyways to tackle it.

Considering that Americans have more than 14 million colonoscopies every year, not only would that have been a big money maker for the Radiologists, more Americans would have access to getting one done too. Had Medicare started paying for those, the GI and Family Medicine docs doing the endoscopic colonoscopies were very likely to see some traffic go down, since most patients dread the endoscopic  experience...

Read Story Here

Also Read:

- Radiologist Salaries in US
- Gastroenterologist (GI Doctors) Salaries in US