Are you doing all you can to inform and educate today’s media-saturated imaging consumer?

By Marianne Matthews

MM headshotNo matter how they get their news—from the papers, television, or online— in any given week the average American is likely to hear or read something about diagnostic imaging. And very often, it is something controversial.

Consider, for example, the reporting about an article published in April in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It explored the benefits and risks of mammography screening based on 50 years of data, and the authors concluded that a one-size-fits-all approach to screening mammography is not proving to be the best practice. To maximize the benefit of mammography screening, decisions should be individualized based on patients’ risk profiles, said the co-authors Lydia E. Pace, MD, MPH, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Nancy L Keating, MD, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

But the ACR immediately responded saying they continued to recommend annual mammograms beginning at age 40. Breast cancer screening based primarily on risk, wrote the ACR, “would miss the overwhelming majority of breast cancers present in women and result in thousands of unnecessary deaths each year.”

The mass media was all over the story, often spinning it with a “what’s a woman to do?,” angle. No doubt, women are hearing the reports, listening to both sides of the story, and some are apt to skip that yearly mammogram.

The fact is, in an era of 24/7 media coverage, no one can escape the “news”— especially when controversy is involved. But what’s news and what’s noise? How do people sort through the facts and make smart decisions about their healthcare? Consider the barrage of stories consumers have heard about radiation exposure from medical imaging—the countless reports of terrifying accidents, for example.

On January 31, 2014, The New York Times ran an op-ed with the provocative headline “We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer.” The piece, by cardiologist Rita Redberg and radiologist Rebecca Smith-Bindman of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, outlines how overused CT scans expose patients to deadly radiation. The authors alert readers to some pretty frightening facts: The use of CT scans has “soared in the last 20 years.” Our exposure to medical radiation has increased more than sixfold between the 1980s and 2006. And in case you weren’t aware, the radiation doses of CT scans are 100 to 1000 times higher than conventional X-rays.

But the beauty of this op-ed is that the co-authors also provide information that empowers patients. They write: “Patients have a part to play as well. Consumers can go to the Choosing Wisely website to learn about the most commonly used tests.” The op-ed goes on to offer valuable advice by instructing patients on what to ask before agreeing to a CT scan.

Is it any wonder patients are more involved in their healthcare than ever before? They’re hearing more about it and paying more for it, too.  And the radiology community needs to take notice and be proactive.

That’s why we’ve dedicated this issue to articles about the imaging consumer.

Never before has communicating with the consumer been so important. Call it what you want—patient engagement, Imaging 3.0, or as we ‘ve called this issue, “Consumer Conscious.”

Talk to your patients. Get closer to the consumer. Today’s patients are far from passive. Rather, they’re seeking out information about imaging and sorting through the controversies surrounding imaging. Shouldn’t you be their primary source of answers? And when the story has a decided spin, you can set the record set.