MRI Capacity Leads to Unnecessary Back Surgery

The accessibility and availability of Magnetic Resonance Imaging has been linked to an increase in low back surgery. Research published in the October issue of Health Affairs shows a statistical increase in the number of surgeries performed in correlation to the number of machines in a geographic area.
MRI scanners are a huge capital investment and a state of art machine costs more than $2 million dollars. A lower back scan is about $1500 per patient. The number of machines increased in a five year period from 7.6 machines per 1 million people in 2000 to 26.6 machines per million …