A new study sheds light on another significant, and most likely, unnecessary, expense to Medicare.

Not only are doctors conducting tests on elderly patients that they don’t need, but they’re also giving them expensive medications that won’t make much of a difference in the face of terminal illnesses.

The study, published in the journal Medical Care, found that just over half of Medicare patients over the age of 75 with advanced colon cancer were being prescribed three or more drugs to treat the illness.

For a bit of context, a decade ago only 2 percent of such patients were receiving that level of medication.

Many of the expensive drugs prescribed are more appropriate for younger patients with earlier stages of the disease, argued study author Dr. Cathy Bradley of the University of Colorado Cancer Center.

"This research found that there is a trend for elderly late-stage colorectal cancer patients to receive newer, more expensive drugs," she said, according to HealthDay. "However, in spite of their receiving more drugs, no (significant) survival benefit was observed."

The median elderly patient who was prescribed such high levels of medication appeared to live one month longer, as a result.

And what do the patients go through to get that extra month of life? Bradley explained:

"Common toxicities associated with newer therapies include diarrhea, dehydration, bowel wall injury, hemorrhage, wound-healing complications, and GI perforation.”

Increasingly, health advocates are urging doctors to speak frankly with patients about how they want to spend their remaining days before authorizing aggressive medical interventions. Some argue that part of the problem is not just patients who lack information about what decisions to make, but doctors who have been trained to prolong life under every circumstance.

Instant Insights /

Terminally ill Medicare patients receiving too many drugs

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