IMAGING SERVICES

The Cost of Imaging Services

[Name if the Institution]

[Date of Submission]The Cost of Imaging Services

Introduction

Over the last decade, the health care cost in the United States has doubled the general rate at which inflation has increased in the country during the same period. As of 2010, the cost incurred upon national treasury in terms of health care spending is more than 16 percent of the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the country (Allen, 2007, pp. 12-42). According to the economic experts, if this enormous increase in health care spending is left unchecked, the cost will jump to nearly 20 percent of the total GDP by the year 2015 (Allen, 2007, pp. 12-42). Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office has predicted, based upon the current trends, an alarming figure of 47 percent by the year 2082. It is, therefore, obvious that high rate of increase in health care cost is the focus of attention, not only for the government, but also for many other sectors of the society (Ameringer, 2012, pp. 4-6). On the basis of which it can safely be argued that health care insurance is in a dire need of reforms.

Many factors are responsible for such an enormous increase in health care costs. Advances in medical and especially diagnostic technologies are one of major elements, which have resulted in to the current state of affairs in health care insurance sector (Lang, 2012). Here it should be made clear that these advances in medical technology and related fields has, without doubt, resulted in the greatly improving the overall ability of the health care professionals to accurately diagnose and treat many diseases that had lead to many people with severe diseases living a happy and healthy life after treatment: a phenomenon that was nearly impossible to exist a few decades earlier (Sunshine & Bhargavan, 2010, pp. 2237-43). For instance, the advancements in medical and diagnostic imaging has greatly revolutionized the many diseases are diagnosed and treated by enabling the physician to accurately acquire the qualitative and quantitative information about a patient's physiological and anatomical characteristics. It is merely due to the modern imaging technologies that many people avoided more costly medical procedures by simply giving accurate and definite results, thereby averting the chances of surgery in numerous cases (Rybkowski, 2009).

During the past few years, the cost of imaging services has increased twice the rate of increase in other medical technologies such as pharmaceuticals and laboratory technologies (Lang, 2012). According to the available statistics, older patients contribute the largest number of patients who avail diagnostic imaging services, a segment of overall population that is expected to increase enormously in the coming few years as the generation of baby-boomers is approaching retirement age (Rybkowski, 2009). The most widely used imaging services include positron emission tomography (PET), computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance (MR). A significant portion of this extraordinary growth in imaging services, however, is mainly due to the inefficient and overutilization of these imaging services. This paper aims at identifying the factors ...