Big driver of medicare spending: doctors doing more tests in their offices

Robert Boyd, a doctor with a family practice in Woodbridge, N.J., began to test more patients in recent years for an unusual neurological condition.

He used a device to test whether people sweat in response to a low-voltage current, a way to diagnose nerve damage. In 2014, he collected $105,905 from Medicare for the procedures.

Testing for the condition rose nationwide in recent years after a device became available that allows doctors to perform tests in their offices—and to make more profit from Medicare for doing so. The federal program for seniors and disabled people paid out $16.7 million for the test in 2014, according to the latest data, a 10-fold increase from two years earlier.

IHPI member, Brian Callaghan, a neurologist at the University of Michigan, says the test’s utility is so specialized that “not even general neurologists should be doing it” routinely. He says he received a research grant from Sudoscan’s maker, Impeto Medical SAS, to examine its effectiveness.