PET Leads Increase in Medicare Imaging Costs for Cancer Patients

At an increase of 53.6 percent, positron emission tomography (PET) accounts for the largest increase in imaging costs related to cancer treatment billed to Medicare from 1999 through 2008, according to research published in the April 28, 2010, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Michaela A. Dinan and colleagues analyzed 100,954 (5 percent) Medicare claims from that decade related to cancer of the breast, colorectal and lung, leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. While conventional radiography rates decreased or stayed the same, increased utilization of bone densitometry was second to PET at 6.3 percent to 20 percent; echocardiograms at 5 percent to 7.8 percent; MR imaging at 4.4 percent to 11.1 percent; and ultrasound at 0.7 percent to 7.4 percent. The largest increase in costs were incurred in lung cancer and lymphoma cases, the authors stated.

“By 2005, one-third of beneficiaries with breast cancer underwent bone scans and half of beneficiaries with lung cancer or lymphoma underwent positron emission tomography scans,” the researchers wrote. “The mean two-year imaging costs per beneficiary increased at a rate greater than the increase in mean total costs per beneficiary for all cancer types.”

The research article, “Changes in the Use and Costs of Diagnostic Imaging Among Medicare Beneficiaries With Cancer, 1998-2006,” can be accessed online at http://jama.ama-assn.org.