A majority of more than 1,000 gastroenterologists responding to a survey believed that pressures to increase the volume of colonoscopies adversely impacted how they performed their procedures, which could potentially affect the quality of colon cancer screening.
Mount Sinai Medical Center researchers sent a 40-question survey to the 5,739 members of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and received 1,073 completed responses. The survey focused on three key areas: the respondent's demographic and practice characteristics, the operational characteristics of their facilities and their observations of colleagues.
They found 92.3 percent of survey respondents indicated production pressures, such as heightened demand for colonoscopies, rising overhead or shrinking reimbursement rates, resulted in physicians postponing, aborting or reducing the extent of a colonoscopy procedure. For example, 7.2 percent of participants said production pressures made them reduce the time examining the colon wall; 5.3 percent of participants said these pressures made them abort a difficult colonoscopy; and 69 percent said they performed a colonoscopy on a patient with an unfavorable risk/benefit ratio.
Mount Sinai Medical Center researchers sent a 40-question survey to the 5,739 members of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and received 1,073 completed responses. The survey focused on three key areas: the respondent's demographic and practice characteristics, the operational characteristics of their facilities and their observations of colleagues.
They found 92.3 percent of survey respondents indicated production pressures, such as heightened demand for colonoscopies, rising overhead or shrinking reimbursement rates, resulted in physicians postponing, aborting or reducing the extent of a colonoscopy procedure. For example, 7.2 percent of participants said production pressures made them reduce the time examining the colon wall; 5.3 percent of participants said these pressures made them abort a difficult colonoscopy; and 69 percent said they performed a colonoscopy on a patient with an unfavorable risk/benefit ratio.
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