Cost-awareness Anecdote: Not Colon Cancer

The following story is from Dr. Davis Liu, a primary care doctor from California and author of "Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely: Making Intelligent Choices in America's Healthcare System"

My mother's oncologist ordered the blood test, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), to check for the recurrence of colon cancer. The good news was that there was no evidence of recurrence. The bad news was that she didn’t have colon cancer.

She had breast cancer.

Though she was feeling better, the chemotherapy and radiation had taken its toll. For the past couple of months, she had experienced constant nausea and vomiting. During and after treatment, her hands and feet felt like they were on fire. Many times she wanted to give up and quit. Yet she persevered and felt emotionally stronger after the ordeal. She started to feel like herself again. Life began to have some normalcy. Until an insurance bill appeared asking for hundreds of dollars.

Apparently over the past year, her oncologist had routinely ordered the CEA test multiple times as part of her cancer follow-up. When she called to contest the charge, the insurer told her to talk to her doctor. She didn’t know this test was unnecessary until the bill. And until she called me, her son, a primary care doctor.

She asked her oncologist about the repeated blood tests. He simply shrugged. No apologies. No explanation. No acknowledgement of the error. Didn’t he get the lab results of the CEA? Shouldn’t he have been aware that the test was not relevant for her care?

It didn’t matter. In the end, she paid the hundreds of dollars. There was no other choice.
Perhaps the oncologist’s response should not have been surprising. His office was set up so that patients always met with the phlebotomist first for blood work before ever seeing their doctor. As a result, he might never know that a colon cancer test had been repeatedly ordered for a breast cancer patient. His error now would be completely borne financially by the patient. There would be no recourse or appeal.

But perhaps he was an outlier in her treatment of breast cancer.

Although she regularly saw her oncologist, my mother also trusted her surgeon for her cancer care. When she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, a young and enthusiastic solo practitioner successfully performed her lumpectomy. Moreover, her surgeon continued to see her for routine post-operative check-ups and additional follow-ups every few months for the next several years. Her oncologist did exactly the same thing.

Listening to her doctors’ advice, my mother took time out of her day, paid the increasingly expensive co-pays, and went to the oncologist and the surgeon. Her life was busy enough running a home business in addition to her part-time job. She wondered if it was necessary to go to both doctors.

My wife wondered exactly the same thing. As an oncologist, her experience has been that surgeons are happy to hand off patients when the surgery and post-operative care are completed. She could not think of a compelling medical reason why the surgeon would also need to see my mother on a regular basis. In general, oncologists oversee the chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and hormonal therapy for breast cancer, not surgeons.

Despite our concerns, my mother continued to see her surgeon for many more months. She felt guilty when the surgeon’s office kept calling her when she missed follow-up appointments.
She finally stopping going after the surgeon seemed too busy to see her. The few minutes she spent with the surgeon was no longer worth the drive, time off work, or cost of care.
Frankly, I never believed my mother received any medical benefits from these additional visits. She just received an extra bill to pay.

As the only doctor in my family, I viewed my mother’s experience with increasing concern. During her breast cancer treatment, my ill mother had only one focus – getting better.
Like the vast majority of patients, she trusted that her doctors would make the right choices both medically and now increasingly financially. She did not want to be the expert on determining which blood tests were appropriate or the number of post-operative follow-up appointments needed for her cancer treatment. Yet it is apparent that this is the new role patients are asked to play.

It is simply wrong to ask them to do our job. As doctors we are the experts on determining the value of treatments and interventions truly worth our patients’ time and money. Our training and social responsibility must reflect that we are not only healers but also thoughtful stewards of our patients’ financial resources. It’s a new mindset we must accept.