Advances rated by value to patients

Doctors rank what they consider the most and least effective of medical advances.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Sept. 24, 2001.

Washington -- Primary care physicians who were asked to choose among 30 medical innovations that are most beneficial to their patients rated high-tech scanning devices such as magnetic resonance imaging and innovations to treat cardiovascular disease highest.

Bone marrow transplants were ranked last.

On average, the 225 internists who were surveyed rated diagnostic and surgical procedures significantly higher than medications.

The survey results and an accompanying article were published in the September/October issue of the journal Health Affairs.

The survey findings can play a valuable role in the current debate over the allocation of health care dollars, noted the article's authors, Victor R. Fuchs, PhD, a professor of economics at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., and Harold Sox, MD, editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"The need to compare the value to patients of new technologies with their effect on spending is a major source of tension among physicians, hospitals, patients, insurance companies and government policymakers," they said.

"This is the first survey to look at the relative value to patients of different innovations, as judged by leading general internists actively involved in patient care," they added. [...]