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Brendon Nafziger, DOTmed News Associate Editor | December 06, 2012
Over the last five years, in a ranking of the 44 growing BETOS categories, advancing imaging now sits at 38, Lee said.
CT utilization declines - with one exception
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Looking at just CT utilization, Rao's team, in a separate report, found usage rates, with one important exception, are falling off.
From much of the past decade, Medicare CT imaging was booming, with the rate per 1,000 beneficiaries jogging along at a CAGR of 7.8 percent from 2000 to 2009. But in 2008, inpatient growth dipped, and then outpatient growth in 2009, about two years after the DRA took effect. As a whole, in 2010 growth dropped almost 2 percent.
But the drop would have been more than double that, at 4.7 percent, if it weren't for emergency department CT utilization, the only place where growth is still occurring, Rao said. From 2000 to 2010, the CAGR for CT in the ER was 14.5 percent.
"In a way this can be good news for the policymakers," she said. "Really, if we just take out the ED CT, CT is showing declining utilization rates."
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