Blog 1: Over treatment Is Taking a harmful Toll (Lindsay Chase)

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/overtreatment-is-taking-a-harmful-toll/

Do you trust your doctor to tell you the truth? Everyone does or else that wouldn't be the doctor they go to. Some instances doctors will order tests that are not needed to heal someone or to analyze a problem. Over treatment has been a issue on many minds, because it concerns money and most importantly their health. Many patients and doctors believe that the more tests completed can have a better outcome. Doctors are also very good at using the trust of their patients to convince them that they should have more tests completed. According to the Institute of Medicine the cost of the health care system is at least $210 billion a year. That goes to too many scans, blood tests, and procedures ordered by money seeking doctors. Often invasive treatment is done to cure things that could have been left alone and never bothered a person. Over treatment occurs everyday in life when too much trust is given to a doctor. A small solution could be for a patient to start speaking up and asking more questions about what the doctor has planned for them. There have been instances where a doctor wanted to do a MRI on a child, but by the parents asking more questions they realized the test was not needed. When questions are asked it eliminates some of the mystery given to you by a doctor. Often if someone changes doctors the new doctor will require new blood tests or other tests even if the old doctor had just previously issued them. Patients are sometimes sent to several different specialists and go through so many tests that the specialist could forget the original complaint of the patient. The toll of too much medicine can be brief but at the same time very emotional to deal with. Not all problems are things to be cured or tested to begin with. You can be born one way but with acceptance it is easy to realize doctors will order many unnecessary tests. One story stated that a woman occured a black eye so she went to the doctor. When she went to see if her eye looked okay at the doctor she only spoke to the nurse and never once had a chance to speak to her actual daughter. Without analysis the doctor ordered a CAT scan, where they found a blimish near her eye. She then was told she needed a MRI. While she waited to weeks for the MRI results she found herself afraid of having brain cancer, because cancer runs in her fmaily. The nurse finally called with the results only to tell her that everything was okay. So she never saw her doctor or talked to him for him to say she needed tests.