Frequency and Costs of Diagnostic Imaging in Office Practice-A Comparison of Self-Referring and Radiologist-Referring Physicians

Background: to assess possible differences in physicians' practices respect to diagnostic imaging, we compared the frequency and costs of examinations as performed by primary physicians who used imaging in their offices (self-referring) and as ordered by physicians who referred patients to radiologists(radiologist-referring)....Conclusions: physicians who do not refer their to radiologists for medical imaging use imaging examinations more than do physicians who refer their patients to radiologists, and charges are usually higher when the imaging is done by the self-referring. From our results it is not possible to determine which group of uses imaging more appropriately.