The study, published in the American Journal of Managed Care, sought to understand the reason why many physicians request repeats of expensive imaging tests for the same patient. The researchers hypothesized that the redundancy stemmed from physicians not having access to previous imaging records.
Some studies estimate that between 9 percent and 40 percent of all medical images are redundant, becoming an expensive oversight, the researchers wrote in the report.
To test this, researchers linked log data from 2009 to 2010 of physician HIE usage to administrative claims data from two commercial health plans. They watched the association for 90 days through 196,314 patients’ data. Of those patients, 28.7 percent had imaging procedures, and 7.7 percent were repeated within 90 days. However, if the physician accessed the HIE system, the percentage of repetition was 5 percent.
“Repeat imaging may be appropriate if it is being used to determine a change in a patient’s clinical condition,” the researchers wrote. “However, some repeat imaging is ordered because providers do not have easy access to previous medical images.”
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