Last week, the nation’s leading heart organizations released a sweeping new set of guidelines for lowering cholesterol, along with an online calculator meant to help doctors assess risks and treatment options. But, in a major embarrassment to the health groups, the calculator appears to greatly overestimate risk, so much so that it could mistakenly suggest that millions more people are candidates for statin drugs.
Source: Gina Kolata.
I had a reporter call me precisely because they thought the guidelines meant that millions of additional Americans would start taking statins — driving up the cost.
Aren’t doctors incentivized to overmedicate anyway?
Depends.
Docs in large institutions are encouraged to write scripts so the patient will give a good grade on satisfaction surveys. After all, how happy would someone be if they spent 4-5 hours in an ER and left without a prescription.
In more ways than one.
“It’s stunning,” said the cardiologist, Dr. Steven Nissen, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. “We need a pause to further evaluate this approach before it is implemented on a widespread basis.”
At least they caught it.
“After an emergency session on Saturday night, the two organizations that published the guidelines — the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology — said that while the calculator was not perfect, it was a major step forward, and that the guidelines already say patients and doctors should discuss treatment options rather than blindly follow a calculator. ”
I think not so much… they are still sticking with it.
If its anything like the healthcare website, then catching it means nothing. It’ll take months to sort it out.
Just another indicator that personalized medicine is superior to standardized.
Unfortunately we keep trying to move further and further away from it.
It doesn’t fit the party’s ideology.
Which is something people should reflexively understand.