A doctor in Michigan was last week fined US$775,000 for ordering surgeries that were unnecessary. In one case, he removed a woman’s uterus, cervix and both ovaries because of a threat of cancer, even though no cancer was present.
He is hardly alone in his malpractice. Even in 2020, when many hospitals were refusing non-urgent surgeries, more than 100,000 unnecessary and potentially harmful procedures were performed on older patients in the USA, according to anaylsis from health think-tank the Lown Institute.
“You couldn’t go into your local coffee shop, but hospitals brought people in for all kinds of unnecessary procedures,” said Vikas Saini, MD, president of the Lown Institute. “The fact that a pandemic barely slowed things down shows just how deeply entrenched overuse is in American healthcare.”
