Healthcare Costs – Lean Six Sigma Moneybelt

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PSA Test – a Public Health Disaster

Dr. Richard J. Albin, creator of the PSA test for prostate cancer, says that the devastating consequences treatments including surgery and radiation therapy caused:

  •  5,000 deaths soon after surgery
  • up to 70,000 serious complications
  • 50% had persistent blood in their semen
  • up to 300,000 suffered impotence, incontinence or both.

He now calls the widespread use of the PSA test a “Public Health Disaster.”  As a result of these findings, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will recommend that healthy men no longer receive PSA testing.

Unnecessary tests and treatments of all kinds are estimated to cost $250 Billion in the U.S.

Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, Service, Six Sigma.