Hospitals hoping to attract patients and build their brands are teaming up with medical-screening companies to promote tests aimed at consumers worried about potentially deadly heart disease or strokes.

What their promotions don’t say is that an influential government panel recommends against using many of the tests on people without symptoms or risk factors. The panel says such screenings find too few problems to outweigh their drawbacks, which include false positive results, follow-up procedures and potentially unnecessary surgery. Other medical experts warn that the tests could needlessly raise health-care spending.

Inova Health System, one of the Washington, D.C., region’s largest… Continue reading →