In 2006, Reed Abelson in the New York Times reported that the PCI rate in Elyria, Ohio was four times the national average. Now, six-and-a-half years later, the local hospital and cardiology group have agreed to pay $4.4 million to settle US allegations “that the hospital and the physicians “performed angioplasty and stent placement procedures on patients who had heart disease but whose blood vessels were not sufficiently occluded to require the particular procedures at issue.”
The leader of the cardiology group defends its quality of care and says it “settled this matter so we can put it behind us and move forward.”
Gross inappropriate use of PCI has been a pandemic for years and will continue as such wherever it is not being investigated. New Jersey would be a good place to start looking. I refer to this as “The Hopkins Phenomenon”.
FYI:
Not a single lawsuit filed, not a single physician disciplined.