Tips for a healthy approach to testing

May 05 2000

By Gill Gifford

Patients in need of medical tests can save themselves money by taking some basic precautions to ensure that they are not ripped off.

Bob Traynor, a director at health fund risk managers Veripath, said while pathology tests were an essential part of modern medicine, patients should ensure they were correctly billed.

He said excess and unnecessary testing happened regularly, and although the account was generally covered by medical aid, costs were eventually paid by patients in the form of increased medaid contributions.

Medical inflation, he said, was consistently higher than general inflation levels. Traynor said patients who were in need of pathology tests could take the following precautions:

Ask your doctor if all the lab tests he or she has ordered are necessary, and how much they should cost.

Ask your doctor if he or she receives any financial advantage as a result of this referral.

Ask why your doctor prefers a certain laboratory, as there are some laboratories that charge up to 20 percent less for tests. In addition, these cheaper labs are not allowed to perform "shopping lists of tests" as the profiles increase the costs of pathology testing.

Ensure that repeated tests need to be redone in full. For example, hospital patients are often charged repeatedly for a full blood count - which is a batch of tests costing about R60 - when they may only need one test repeated.

If you are referred from a GP to a specialist, ask the GP to send all relevant results with the referral to avoid unnecessary test repeats.

Acknowledgement to