Increased patient cost sharing is likely to miss the mark in safely reducing healthcare spending because many physicians do not routinely consider insured patients’ out-of-pocket costs when recommending expensive medical care, according to a study by researchers at the Center for Studying Health System Change and the University of Chicago Hospitals in the April 9 Archives of Internal Medicine.
Although almost 80 percent of physicians consider patient costs when prescribing a generic over a brand-name drug, far fewer consider patient costs when deciding what diagnostic tests to recommend (40.2%) or deciding whether to hospitalize a patient when outpatient treatment is an option (51.2%), the study found.
“Because physicians consider patient costs less frequently in making decisions about more expensive services, it’s likely that increased patient cost sharing will be limited as an effective cost-control tool,” said Hoangmai H. Pham, MD, the study’s lead author and a senior health researcher at HSC.
