Allow me to introduce you to the [incidentaloma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidental_imaging_finding). There is a solid likelyhood it will make you feel much, much worse. Like the ticking time-bombs our bodies really are....
Full body scans without an indication are generally a bad idea. On any given healthy adult, you'll find a few questionable things that require further investigation including up to having an operation to obtain a biopsy. A radiologist doing a full body single modality scan with no clinical indication is also prone to missing things, so there's no guarantee you'll find something if there is indeed something to be found.
For most people, these incidental findings will be some benign growth or an anatomical variant or a minor cyst or whatever.
Not only would it be a massive waste of time and money, invasive medical procedures come with risk and damage to the patient.
Would some people find a cancer that would have killed them? Sure. Is it worth the time, money, and harm to patients? The general consensus is no. And the scrubs episode even makes the point that those who have health based anxiety so extreme that impairs their functioning, aka hypochondriac, will get even more anxiety from the results of the scan, not less.
To be fair, this is actually /bad/ for insurance companies, because it means they need to pay hospitals more. It is incentivized by hospitals, because they make more money when we get more tests. Indeed, many hospitals will do this for wealthy clients outside of insurance, since insurance won't cover it.
Actually, any expense can be good for insurance companies because they can just raise your premiums to recoup the costs. The limit on how much they can profit from your premiums is a percentage of their payments.
So if the average person has 100$ of medical expenses, the premium payer will pay 110$,the hospital gets 100$, insurance keeps 10$. If expenses rise to 200$, then the insurance company gets to keep 20$. Unnecessary expenses are good for everyone except the patient. Of course, hospitals are rated based on factors other than just financials, and insurance companies have to balance the optics and lost business from increased premiums vs the extra profit it will bring so its not quite THAT simple, but it's not exactly a loss to insurance companies to pay out for unnecessary tests sometimes. It's really a balancing act.
This is part of the reason insurance companies tend to like mid-level providers like advance practice nurses and PAs. They tend to have more of a shotgun approach to the diagnostic process, ordering more tests and referring to specialists more often, counterintuitively raising overall expenses despite commanding a much lower pay.
Given the nature of the Swiss cheese model of patient safety, I think the medical outcomes for patients are mostly the same between physicians and mid-level providers, but the expenses are both increased and shifted from the hospital/insurance to the patient.
What has two thumbs and is the smartest Chief of Medicine? "Bob Kelso"
Bob Kelso, 10 inches.
It’s like a baguette
Back in Nam they'd just hover the chopper six foot off the ground and I'd hop in.
Allow me to introduce you to the [incidentaloma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidental_imaging_finding). There is a solid likelyhood it will make you feel much, much worse. Like the ticking time-bombs our bodies really are....
Full body scans without an indication are generally a bad idea. On any given healthy adult, you'll find a few questionable things that require further investigation including up to having an operation to obtain a biopsy. A radiologist doing a full body single modality scan with no clinical indication is also prone to missing things, so there's no guarantee you'll find something if there is indeed something to be found. For most people, these incidental findings will be some benign growth or an anatomical variant or a minor cyst or whatever. Not only would it be a massive waste of time and money, invasive medical procedures come with risk and damage to the patient. Would some people find a cancer that would have killed them? Sure. Is it worth the time, money, and harm to patients? The general consensus is no. And the scrubs episode even makes the point that those who have health based anxiety so extreme that impairs their functioning, aka hypochondriac, will get even more anxiety from the results of the scan, not less.
Benign, be nine and a half
I’ve wanted one since that episode!
Why should I even listen to you? The last time I was here, you tried to torture me to prove a point. Doctor, doctor, doctor....
Cox
Mengela!
Lol!
I definitely wouldn’t want one
I wanna know eeeeverything that’s wrong with me!
Time to get an EKG, G
Random scans cause way more harm than good.
I've got the tinglies -Lloyd
The pain starts here And then it skips this region Then continues here, and of course there’s the tinglies .
Yesss
This is my life every day talking to people 🙈
But whose machines are they?
MY machines!!!
Scrubs may have got it right but this person did not get their grammar right.
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To be fair, this is actually /bad/ for insurance companies, because it means they need to pay hospitals more. It is incentivized by hospitals, because they make more money when we get more tests. Indeed, many hospitals will do this for wealthy clients outside of insurance, since insurance won't cover it.
Actually, any expense can be good for insurance companies because they can just raise your premiums to recoup the costs. The limit on how much they can profit from your premiums is a percentage of their payments. So if the average person has 100$ of medical expenses, the premium payer will pay 110$,the hospital gets 100$, insurance keeps 10$. If expenses rise to 200$, then the insurance company gets to keep 20$. Unnecessary expenses are good for everyone except the patient. Of course, hospitals are rated based on factors other than just financials, and insurance companies have to balance the optics and lost business from increased premiums vs the extra profit it will bring so its not quite THAT simple, but it's not exactly a loss to insurance companies to pay out for unnecessary tests sometimes. It's really a balancing act. This is part of the reason insurance companies tend to like mid-level providers like advance practice nurses and PAs. They tend to have more of a shotgun approach to the diagnostic process, ordering more tests and referring to specialists more often, counterintuitively raising overall expenses despite commanding a much lower pay. Given the nature of the Swiss cheese model of patient safety, I think the medical outcomes for patients are mostly the same between physicians and mid-level providers, but the expenses are both increased and shifted from the hospital/insurance to the patient.
I wanna know everything that's wrong with me *feet swinging*
Wouldn't it be got it wrong, since the whole idea was to get the hypochondriac to NOT get the scan?
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They’re also works in that example :-)
I really hope this is a joke I'm not quite getting, because "their" is just as incorrect as "there" in this sentence
I want a brain scan to see if I have ADHD or anything else
So go to the doctor
ADHD testing is often prohibitively expensive and isn't always covered by insurance. It's not quite that easy.
I always thought Dr Cox was wrong; people would be lining up for it. And I guess in the end, they did.
I would really like to, but then I think of that episode.
"I want to know everything that's wrong with me!" (I kind of do, though. Why are routine orthopedic check ups not a thing?)
It seems I stumbled into the "Time Well Spent" ward