Colorectal Cancer :: Early colon cancer diagnosis with colonoscopies made possible by Medicare

Early colon cancer or colorectal cancer diagnosis was made possible by changes in Medicare reimbursement policy few years back. The study was published by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the December issue of Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The study was funded by a Beeson Career Development Award to Gross, and by the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center at Yale.

Medicare reimbursement policy was changed in 1998 to provide coverage for screening colonoscopies of patients with increased colon cancer risk. The policy was expanded in 2001 to cover colonoscopy screenings for all individuals.

Led by Cary P. Gross, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, the team evaluated patients in the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Medicare linked database who were 67 years of age and older and had a primary diagnosis of colon cancer between 1992 and 2002.

– colonoscopy uses increased by 600 percent

– approx. 25 percent of colon cancer patients were diagnosed at early stage

“We found that as the use of colonoscopy increased after the Medicare policy change, there was a corresponding increase in the likelihood that patients with colon cancer would be diagnosed at an early, curable stage,” said Gross.


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