OPINION: Reform shouldn't make mammograms harder to get
Laura Grottano, who lives in Northport, is a member of the Emergency Coalition to Save Cancer Imaging.
The only reason I am here today is because my doctor spotted a tumor in my left breast during a routine mammogram.
I'm one of the lucky ones whose breast cancer was diagnosed and treated early, but there will be far fewer women in New York, and across the country, who'll get that chance if Washington goes ahead with plans to reduce reimbursement rates for cancer imaging services.
As lawmakers talk about reforming our health care system - a goal I wholeheartedly endorse - one extremely troubling and misguided proposal on the table is drastic cuts in Medicare payments for MRI, CT and PET/CT exams, which are used to diagnose and stage treatment for cancer and other life-threatening diseases. According to a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, increased use of advanced medical imaging has lengthened the life expectancy of patients in the United States by nearly nine months, a statistically significant improvement.
If enacted, these cuts will impede access to lifesaving cancer imaging services. Unfortunately, they will also drastically reduce access to routine mammography services, especially for women in rural and underserved areas.
Radiologists who provide mammograms are already offering these services at a shortfall. Reducing reimbursement rates for imaging services significantly reduces revenue and will eliminate the very slim profit margins they currently operate with, forcing many to close their facilities.
That Congress would even consider further reductions in reimbursements for imaging services is baffling, considering that the Deficit Reduction Act of 2007 already imposed dramatic cuts.
The impact of those cuts was profound. Wait times to get appointments on Long Island have skyrocketed in recent years, as more facilities have shut down or stopped providing mammograms due to the high costs.
In fact, according to the American College of Radiology, since 2000, the number of accredited facilities offering mammography is down by almost 12 percent nationally. According to a recent congressional report, in New York City over the past decade, roughly 26 percent of the providers have closed. On Long Island, wait times in the past four years have nearly doubled. The proposed cuts can only make it worse.
You don't have to be a doctor, let alone a brain surgeon, to understand that the fewer facilities offering mammography screenings, the longer the wait time and the more time a tumor has to grow or metastasize into other organs of the body - and that lowers survival rates.
Simply put, if these proposed reductions take place, more mammography facilities will close, wait times will increase and fewer women will survive breast cancer.
That's simply unconscion-able, and it is particularly disturbing to Long Islanders, who already have high rates of breast cancer. According to the NationalNational Cancer Instituterates of breast cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, Nassau and Suffolk counties have some of the highest rates of breast cancer incidence and mortality in the country. Cuts to these critical imaging services could be devastating to our community and, of course, our families.
Our health care system certainly needs to be reformed, but we shouldn't have to give our lives to make it happen.
