Physicians with fewer than ten years of experience practice higher-cost medicine than physicians with over 40 years of experience. A study in JAMA Internal Medicine finds this disparity may be due to the lack of formal cost-conscious curricula in graduate medical education.
The Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine distributed a survey to its membership on cost-conscious care curricula and found 49.8 percent of graduate medical education programs do not have a cost-conscious care curriculum in place yet. About 15 percent of programs said they have a cost-conscious curriculum currently in place.
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While 84.9 percent of programs said they believe graduate medical education has a responsibility to help slow the rising cost of healthcare, only 57.5 percent said their program "consistently modeled cost-conscious care."
Researchers suggest graduate medical education programs should be more adamant about teaching and assessing cost-conscious care. They also suggest programs that already have such curricula in place should study its impact and help encourage other programs to adopt similar curricula.
A study published in Health Affairs in 2012 found newer physicians have 13.2 percent higher overall costs than more experienced physicians.
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