Keep Seniors Healthy-Unnecessary medical testing and Physician Report Cards

Attention Seniors...

What are your thoughts about physician "report cards". These are the newest thing that are being generated by insurance companies as well as private industry to "grade" your doctor. If you ask most physicians, they probably are not in favor of this. You can understand why. What if some beligerent or hostile patient, created a smear campaign for a physician and consistently wrote or submitted negative grades and comments on that particular physician? The doctor would have no real defense of unjustified attacks or unvalidated claims regarding their performance. There is one Michaign Insurance Plan that allows phsysicans to challenge inaccurate data online. Also, an unintended consequence of scorecards or report cards is that htey could motivate physicians to avoid noncompliant patients.

The flip side is... are you the consumer entitled to see this info recognizing that some of it might not be accurate? What are your thoughts? Is it fair to have a "report card" on doctors generated by patients? Whould these only be used internally by health insurance companies or do you the consumer want to see them also?

Keep in mind , it is unclear that report card rankings actually reflect a physician's true quality.

Let us know your thoughts on this issue.

What about Unnecessary medical testing? Why do you think doctors do it? Millions of dollars are spent each year on unnecessary medical tests? Do you think these are motivated by medicolegal concerns by the doctor, ie "if I dont order it, I will be held responsible for this and may get sued". Doctors are concerned about missing diagnoses that could cost them in a malpractice case.. as lawyers will jump all over this... so doctors tend to want to take a "cya" approach to practicing medicine. Can you blame them?