Calcium scoring at "Indian" rates in the US...what's next!

Two new hospitals in Wisconsin are offering "heart scans" (i.e. calcium scoring) at prices of 99$ and 49$ respectively. This has made the news in two separate reports in the lay press. Click here and here to read them.

Calcium scoring in India costs around Rs 5000, i.e. 110$ or so and to be able to do it at such a low cost in a country such as the US where healthcare costs are skyhigh, is amazing. Of course, when you read the articles in more detail, it is apparent that these are marketing gimmicks to get patients coming into the hospitals, both of which are "cardiac" hospitals. Abnormal calcium scores can serve as a basis for further testing, which can then generate more revenues.

This also makes sense in a setting where calcium scoring is not reimbursed by insurance. In situations where patients have to pay for the services directly, it is unlikely that they will fork out large sums of money for screening tests. Though we've heard in the past that people were paying upto 1500$ for "whole body" CT screening, these businesses are now failing and the whole CT screening industry in the US is on oxygen.

In our country, whole body screening has never taken off. There are many reasons, but the prime one seems to be that no one has actually tried to market it aggressively. Moreover bypassing referring doctors and going directly to patients, is not an easy task especially for service providers such as radiologists and pathologists.

Even calcium scoring has not really taken off and it does not seem that it will become very popular in the near future. The main reason for this now seems to be that if we can perform CT coronary angiograms well with 16 and 64 slice scanners and a calcium score is thrown in anyway, it makes no sense to perform just calcium score studies.