Forget the Annual Physical: It’s a Waste of Your and Your Doctors’ Time
Slate examines the benefit of the annual physical and finds it wanting. Nearly one-in-ten physician visits is for annual checkups ― costing about $8 billion annually. Otherwise healthy Americans visit their physicians more than 44 million times a year despite having no medical complaint that needs to be addressed. What constitutes an annual physical exam varies form one doctor to the next. Your doctor may just talk to you about your health, check blood pressure and listen to your chest through a stethoscope. Other physicians (or your own physician on a different day) may order preventive medical screenings like mammograms, check for cholesterol. A doctor may even order a battery of laboratory tests. The exact procedures can vary because there are no standardized procedures for what is included in an annual health exam. According to Slate:
The annual health exam is a venerable tradition, stretching back to the late 19th century — those heady days of medicine when doctors overestimated their own ability to cure disease, and badly underestimated their tendency to cause it. We’re now in the evidence-based era of medicine, and there’s little evidence that annual exams provide any benefit. So here’s a free bit of advice: If you’re not sick, don’t go to the doctor.
So what’s the problem? Besides the waste of resources, there’s an elevated chance for false positives and all the accompanying mental anguish and follow up procedures to ascertain there is no (and never was an) actual problem. There is also the tendency to “medicalize” minor ailments, when patients report symptoms they would have ignored. As the result of annual exams, doctors often treat (or over treat) conditions that would have gone away on their own.
Interesting, but I think everyone wants to make sure that they are healthy. How often are we told that someone could’ve been saved if it had been caught earlier? You can quit going, but I’m not going to change my behavior.
Right. That is why I think an annual check up is necessary because many illnesses at times don’t have symptoms and a person think he/she is healthy. In this sense, I think that we should push our doctors to do a blood test and anything else that could detect something instead of just taking our blood pressure.
“How often are we told that someone could’ve been saved if it had been caught earlier?”
How often must one have a checkup to be sure of being saved?
Every 5 years? 3 Years? 1 Year? One month? Weekly?
Every individual’s natural risk-aversion helps explain why utilization of medical services rises with the level of insurance. It also helps explain why a “free” preventive care benefit is so appealing to individuals – even though the benefit to the whole population is at best doubtful and even though the net effect on total population cost is probably to increase it.
It’s a political winner – not necessarily a public health or finance winner.
I completely agree that we need to catch things earlier. But I think the point is that annual physicals don’t do that. Lets say that you are going to have a heart attack in the next year. The only way a doctor is going to figure out that you have heart issues is a bunch of tests from a cardiologist….which in no way is part of a physical.
I really believe in being healthy through diet exercise and prevention….but most doctors don’t believe in that, so going to them once a year for a physical isn’t going to help make you healthier.
Most doctors just treat symptoms or wait until there are symptoms before they do anything. If their aren’t symptoms at the time of a physical, then there is nothing the doc can do. If you have symptoms of a major illness, you should see the doctor immediately, not wait for an annual physical.
“We’re now in the evidence-based era of medicine, and there’s little evidence that annual exams provide any benefit.”
Any benefit? Or any benefit greater than the incurred cost? It has to be the latter.
Since when are we concerned about cost? What happened to “…if it can save just one life…”?
selective outrage? politicization?
you choose.
Politicization.
What? Outrage.
Neither
I disagree with main premise behind this post. This is assuming that in general, most physical check-ups are a waste of time and resources. I highly doubt that is the case when certain patients discover they have serious illnesses after getting lab results back from their annual check-up. I can see the waste in going for a check-up where you merely “talk” to your doctor and get your blood pressure taken, but I don’t see the waste in a more comprehensive check-up.
I think the post’s data is refering to that vast majority of the time, no study is ever speaking on an absolute level, because there are exceptions to every rule.
I really doubt even saying a vast majority of the time it’s a waste. I find little validity in that “data” since the same post mentions there isn’t even a uniform standard for check-ups.
This argument still seems bad. Why not just get a better doctor instead of worrying about “over treatment”
Most doctors are strong proponents of the annual physical. You come in, the nurse takes your blood pressure, checks your weight, etc. Your doctor looks it over for 30 seconds and asks you how you’ve been feeling? He uses his stethoscope and (if you act like you’re overly concerned), he orders a complete blood count and a urinalysis. He only spends 10 minutes on this task and your insurer gets billed $150 to $300 for it.
Is this beneficial? Yes, at the margin there may be some benefits — albeit small ones for most people. The real question is: If you feel healthy and have the option of spending $300 on a well-person visit, would you do it? Probably not every year, but maybe once every other year of every fifth year until a chronic problem is discovered.
My doctor told me that almost all potential problems could be found in blood test….so I have blood workup done and skip the other parts for 5-10 intervals.
As a cancer survivor I can tell you if I was having annual check-ups I might have caught my cancer at stage 1 instead of stage 3. I went 3 years without a check-up and it almost cost me my life.