Despite an emerging consensus that tests for prostate cancer often do more harm than good, federal officials are backing off a proposed plan to penalize doctors who order such tests for patients.

Even medical groups that agree that far too many men have been subjected to cancer screenings said that the proposed rule was too heavy-handed, and did not take into consideration the specifics of each circumstance.

As a result, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was flooded with complaints about the proposed rule from doctors, who argued that if put in place, the rule would mean that they would be penalized for running tests on patients who are generally agreed to be better candidates for screenings, due to family history or an enlarged prostate.

“I am all for quality improvement and standardizing care, but it’s got to be something everyone agrees on, and this is not one of them,” J. Stuart Wolf, chairman of the science and quality council of the American Urological Association, told the Wall Street Journal. His organization pushed CMS to abandon the proposed rule, which it floated in November.

Widespread prostate screenings are increasingly viewed by public health authorities as counter-productive, particularly for senior citizens. Prostate cancer is a slowly-developing disease that often does not significantly reduce an individual’s life expectancy, but in many instances, patients are subjected to aggressive interventions that lower their quality of life or endanger their health. Worse, some of those who undergo such treatments do so because of a false positive test.

A recent study found that doctors regularly order up expensive cancer screenings for Medicare patients over the age of 75. A quarter of men over 75 were screened for prostate cancer in 2012 and a similar proportion of women of that age were screened for breast cancer. Many experts believe running tests on patients of that age are a tremendous waste of money that result in many seniors spending the final months or years of their life in pain.

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Medicare won't penalize doctors for prostate screenings

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