Although “routine preoperative medical testing is not recommended for patients undergoing low-risk surgery…testing is common.” Catherine Chen, MD, MPH, and colleagues took a look at the incidence of routine preoperative testing in Medicare patients scheduled for cataract surgery in 2011. The study provided estimates of the costs of unnecessary routine preoperative testing, and found that this testing is “costlier than has been reported previously.”
The review was selected by the editors to appear in the “Weekly Highlights from the JAMA Network,” a weekly digest from the Journal of the American Medical Association of their most impactful articles.
Chen CL, Clay TH, McLeod S, Chang HP, Gelb AW, Dudley RA. A Revised Estimate of Costs Associated with Routine Preoperative Testing in Medicare Cataract Patients with a Procedure-Specific Indicator. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2018 Mar 1;136(3):231-238.