It’s become one of those trendy phrases, “unnecessary care.” When you hear it on television or talkshow radio it’s usually said with a sneer. Indeed, the speakers almost spit the phrase out — “unnecessary care” — like it tastes bad.  It’s almost always accompanied by “fraud and abuse,” or a not so subtle accusation that some doctor is profiting off this unnecessary care at the expense of some poor patient. But is this true? Is this always the case? Are there no longer any circumstances whatsoever where the doctor really does know best?

I’m an ophthalmologist, an eye surgeon.  Every single day in the office I see several patients who have enormous cataracts which have dramatically affected their vision, and yet they are not only totally unaware of this decrease, they are militant in their rejection of surgery to improve their vision. Some of them have vision which has decreased to a point where, not only would they fail their drivers license test, they are nothing short of a menace to society behind the wheel. Because cataract surgery is an elective procedure, the patient gets to choose whether or  not to proceed with surgery. In other words, operating on a patient with a cataract who does not feel he has a problem would be “unnecessary care.”

The opposite version of this happens every day, too. In about 25 states there are strict, numerical guidelines that insurance companies (including Medicare) used to determine whether or not cataract surgery is medically necessary. Not a day goes by when I don’t see a patient who is bitterly unhappy with her vision, and yet her measured visual acuity is better than the threshold for medical necessity. Despite the fact that this patient feels handicapped by decreased vision caused by a cataract, operating on her is considered unnecessary care.

It kinda tricky. Sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t thing. I know it seems like a rather fine distinction, but cataract surgery is actually a big deal when it comes to the economics of medicine in the United States. Did you know that there are almost 3,000,000 cataract surgeries performed every year in the United States? Could some of these surgeries have been unnecessary? I dunno. I’m really struggling with the definition of necessary, frankly. Is cataract surgery in my two patients unnecessary? Says who?

You can achieve the same relative mortality rates for atrial fibrillation with either a cardiac ablation, or a cocktail of medications. Maybe you are medicine–free with the ablation, and therefore free of not only the yoke of your daily medicine schedule and side effects, but also the considerable burden of navigating your health insurance-approved medication list. The ablation might be 10 times the cost of the medicines, but does that make it unnecessary? Too much? Says who?

So how do these two cataract patient scenarios play out? Well, the very unhappy patient with a cataract of any size whose vision does not reach that threshold level of medical necessity always chooses to wait until her insurance will pay for the cataract surgery. Always, whether she is a retired schoolteacher or a wealthy heiress worth tens of millions of dollars. She leaves the office unhappy, frustrated, and frightened. She cannot enjoy her daily activities because she cannot see well enough, and she is frightened by the prospect of normal activities like driving.

The other patient? Well, this patient typically has a monstrous cataract, so brown and cloudy it’s like looking through beef broth, or even beef gravy. This patient gets angry, too, but he is angry at me. He’s angry and offended that I would have the audacity to suggest that his vision is poor, too poor to drive, for example. He doesn’t understand what 20/50, or 20/80, or 20/100 vision means, and frankly he doesn’t really care. He’s got a drivers license, dammit, and he’s legal to drive. These visits almost always end something like this:

Me: “What kind of car do you drive?”

Patient: “A crown Vic.”

Me: “What color is your Crown Vic?”

Patient:” White. Why?”

Me: “Because my wife and kids are driving on the same roads as you, and I’m going to tell them to stop and pull over every time they see a white Crown Victoria.”

I say that’s necessary care.

Darrell White is an ophthalmologist who blogs at Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind.

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