Patients who are worried about the financial burden of advanced imaging are more likely to go into debt or forego exams altogether to cope with their medical expenses, according to recent survey results.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, highlight the various coping strategies patients revert to when faced with the high out-of-pocket costs of medical care.
“One in three Americans experience medical cost distress, and more fear the cost of a serious illness more than getting seriously ill,” Gelareh Sadigh, MD, with the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, and co-authors wrote.
These worries negatively impact a patient’s overall health and can decrease their quality of life. The experts noted that 12%-75% of chronically ill patients will delay or completely forego care due to the high out-of-pocket costs associated with their imaging exams.
This is what led the researchers to ask patients how financial anxiety affects their healthcare decision-making. Across five outpatient imaging clinics, 671 surveys were collected from patients undergoing either CT or MRI exams. Individuals were asked about their level of financial worry related to out-of-pocket costs, the ways in which they cope with these costs and whether they had ever skipped care completely due to the impending financial burden of imaging.
Of the respondents, 22.2% reported some level of financial anxiety related to their imaging costs. Nearly 35% admitted to using coping strategies to foot the bill. These included decreasing household spending (22.4%), tapping into savings (14.8%) and increasing debt (15.1%).
Concerningly, 15% of respondents said they did not adhere to their care plan in at least one instance. In this study, nonadherence was described as not filling appropriate prescriptions, taking fewer pills than prescribed to ration the supply and skipping imaging exams all together.
The authors noted that while imaging price transparency is beneficial, it could also give patients sticker shock, deterring them from getting the exam. In these cases, screening at the patient-level for financial fragility could help patients cover the costs of their medical needs.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She joined Innovate Healthcare in 2021 and has since put her unique expertise to use in her editorial role with Health Imaging.