Anyone searching for ways to quantify waste in the medical system might want to look up the latest stats on double CT scans in hospitals.
CT scans deliver powerful doses of radiation to patients, and experts say it's rare for outpatients to need two of them in the same visit. But hospitals can bill Medicare twice if patients are scanned once using iodine contrast to show blood flow, and again without it.
The New York Times spotlighted the issue memorably in 2011, but that was before official data from Medicare were available. So what's happened since then?