Increase in Medicare-backed breast cancer screenings unsustainable

Breast cancer screening costs for Medicare patients skyrocketed between 2001 and 2009, though a boost did not lead to progressing showing of new breast cancer cases, according to a investigate published by Yale School of Medicine researchers in a Journal of a National Cancer Institute.

While a series of screening mammograms achieved among Medicare patients remained fast during a same time period, a investigate focused on a adoption of newer imaging technologies in a Medicare population, such as digital mammography. Brigid Killelea, M.D., partner highbrow of surgery, and Cary Gross, M.D., highbrow of inner medicine during Yale School of Medicine and executive of a Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center during Yale Cancer Center, were lead authors of a study.

“Screening mammography is an critical tool, though this rate of boost in cost is not sustainable,” pronounced Killelea, partner highbrow of surgery. “We need to settle screening discipline for comparison women that implement record appropriately, and minimize nonessential biopsies and over-diagnosis to keep costs underneath control.”

Gross, Killelea, and other members of a Yale COPPER investigate group explored trends in a cost of breast cancer screening. They identified a use of newer, some-more costly approaches including digital mammography and computer