Why choose expensive hip replacements?
Doctors have hit back at claims by Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, that they don’t always choose the best and most cost-effective treatments, particularly when it comes to hip replacements.
Ms Roxon said that 99% of patients were provided with expensive artificial hip joints, which actually proved more troublesome than cheaper alternatives.
Doctors were free to choose whichever treatment they considered most appropriate “with little consideration of cost”, the Health Minister said in The Age newspaper report.
Hip replacements were a good example of how this didn’t always result in taxpayers getting value for money.
“The Government does not want to intervene in clinical decision-making inappropriately,” Ms Roxon told a health forum in Sydney.
“(But) we need the professions to exercise leadership so that clinical practice is based on what is most effective and cost effective”.
