Too much medical care can kill, author warns in Texas
About one-third of health care spending is wasted, much of it on care that is unneccessary for patients but lucrative for doctors, author says.
By Mary Ann Roser
Those are just some of the ways Americans are overtreated by doctors — and often harmed in the process, according to Rosemary Gibson, co-author of "The Treatment Trap: How the Overuse of Medical Care Is Wrecking Your Health and What You Can Do to Prevent It." Gibson, section editor of the Archives of Internal Medicine, a scientific journal published by the American Medical Association, wrote the book with Janardan Prasad Singh, a World Bank economist .
Gibson was in Texas this month to speak to a national physicians conference in San Antonio. In an interview with the American-Statesman, she said she hopes the book serves as a warning to consumers to be more informed — and skeptical — about their medical care.
"The Treatment Trap" includes accounts from doctors, nurses, patients and family members who tell of harm and death from unnecessary and risky operations. Some women could no longer have babies because of unnecessary hysterectomies for fibroid tumors. People were treated for cancers they never had, and tens of thousands of children unnecessarily receive ear tubes each year to prevent infections.
Gibson, along with the Consumers Union's Safe Patient Project , is collecting patient stories of overtreatment online (www.treatmenttrap.org ). Many doctors do not overtreat, and even some who do don't see what they do as overtreatment; others are making big salaries at the expense of patients, she said.
Gibson cited the recent case of Baltimore cardiologist Dr. Mark Midei, accused of inserting multiple unnecessary heart stents, as deeply troubling. The Texas Medical Board has raised similar allegations against Dr. Samuel DeMaio of Austin, who is now practicing in El Paso. A board panel is scheduled to meet in mediation with him Jan. 31.
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