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Diagnostic imaging and spending review: extreme problems call for extreme measures

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Published:
La radiologia medica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The number of diagnostic imaging tests has increased dramatically over the past decade and about 5 billion diagnostic examinations are performed worldwide each year. According to Health Ministry, Italy, is in second place for the number of CT and MR tests per thousand inhabitants in 2014 with a score of 83.3 (only Germany has a higher score, 95.2) that is a long way off from the European average of 46.5. It has also the highest ratio of magnetic resonances per person with 24,6 machines per million inhabitants, followed only by Greece and Finland. The development of the New Health Information System (NSIS) in 2010 made uniformly readable the non-homogeneous clinical data from all the different Italian regions and permitted a detailed analysis of all diagnostic imaging within the public outpatient care setting in Italy in 2012. Despite that MRI examinations represented only the 10% of the total number of imaging tests performed, their cost reached 30% of the health-care expenditure for outpatient diagnostic imaging with an overwhelming contribution coming from musculoskeletal MR which accounted for the 73% of the performed MR tests. It is reasonable to assume that these phenomena are likely due to a lack of appropriateness in MR requests that is difficult to analyze due to an absence or invalid query on the prescriptions which together accounted for the 98.7% of cases. Taking into account the above-mentioned situation, this is possibly why the Ministry of Health decided to perform “linear cuts” in expenditure for some diagnostic examinations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Political Economy, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, University of “Tor Vergata”, Viale Oxford 81, 00100, Rome, Italy

    Anna Micaela Ciarrapico

  2. General Directorate of Health Professions and Human Resources of the SSN, Ministry of Health, Via Ribotta, 5, Rome, 00100, Italy

    Rossana Ugenti

  3. General Directorate of Digitization, of the Health Information System and Statistics, Ministry of Health, Via Ribotta, 5, 00100, Rome, Italy

    Lidia Di Minco & Elisabetta Santori

  4. Department of Diagnostic Imaging, Molecular Imaging, Interventional Radiology and Radiotherapy, Policlinico Tor Vergata, Viale Oxford 81, 00100, Rome, Italy

    Simone Altobelli, Irene Coco & Silvia D’Onofrio

  5. Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, Policlinico Tor Vergata, Viale Oxford 81, 00100, Rome, Italy

    Giovanni Simonetti

Authors
  1. Anna Micaela Ciarrapico
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  2. Rossana Ugenti
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  3. Lidia Di Minco
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  4. Elisabetta Santori
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  5. Simone Altobelli
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  6. Irene Coco
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  7. Silvia D’Onofrio
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  8. Giovanni Simonetti
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Simone Altobelli.

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The authors declare that they had no conflict of interest.

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Ciarrapico, A.M., Ugenti, R., Di Minco, L. et al. Diagnostic imaging and spending review: extreme problems call for extreme measures. Radiol med 122, 288–293 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11547-016-0721-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11547-016-0721-7

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