Doctors’ Test Orders Altered
More than half of all doctors’ orders for diagnostic tests are altered by hospital clerks or lab technicians, but the tests actually performed are usually more appropriate than the ones the doctor ordered, a study indicated last week.
On average, the study of two New York hospitals found that clerical alterations or laboratory “interpretations” of doctors’ orders decreased the amount of inappropriate testing from 37% to 25%.
Dr. Albert Finn of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his colleagues, reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., evaluated how accurately doctors’ testing orders where carried out at the SUNY university hospital and the Northport Veterans Administration Medical Center during a one-week period in the spring of 1986.
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