Doctors told to avoid unnecessary medical tests

Nadira Gunatilleke

Health Ministry Secretary Dr Nihal Jayatilleke requested doctors at state hospitals not to prescribe unnecessary medical tests for patients, a Health Ministry spokesman said.

This should be done to maintain a cost effective management in the free health sector. Last year, 3,500,000 laboratory tests were carried out at the Colombo National Hospital alone, the spokesman said.

He said 301,137 X-Rays, 52,369 CT scans and 10,425 MRI scans were conducted at the Colombo National Hospital last year.

"Sometimes patients request doctors to carry out unnecessary medical tests to make sure that they do not have certain health problems. It is up to the doctors to decide whether such medical tests are essential or not. Unnecessary medical tests in the state sector medical institutions delay essential and urgent medical tests required by patients in critical conditions.

Such unnecessary medical tests are a waste of public funds that should be spent on essential and urgent medical tests," he said.

The spokesman said state health authorities are sometimes forced to send patients to private sector medical laboratories for medical tests because of congestion, delays and lack of facilities but such artificial problems have been created in the state health sector due to the lack of a cost effective system.

"Even in the midst of this artificial congestion in state medical laboratories, the Colombo National Hospital had conducted 2,443 Endoscopes, 460 bypass surgeries and valve replacements and 1,419 anagrams by June 2012," he said.

In addition by June 2012, Colombo National Hospital doctors had performed dialysis on 764 patients with acute renal failure and 4,129 patients with chronic kidney failure and performed 52 kidney transplants. During August and September last year, the Colombo National Hospital conducted 880 x-ray tests, 110 CT scans, 80 MRI scans and 67 radiograms a day, the spokesman said.