USA Today and Kaiser Health News just published a terrific story on the hazards of overscreening, overtesting, and pry-poke-and-prod programs.

It revealed how screening all employees every year–and then sending them in for checkups –makes no sense on any level, and is contrary to all guidelines and literature.  All it does is lead to hyperdiagnosis.  Hyperdiagnosis is overdiagnosis on steroids.  Instead of being the unfortunate result of good-faith efforts to figure out what is wrong with a patient (that’s “overdiagnosis”), hyperdiagnosis is the breathless reporting by wellness vendors on how many sick employees a company has, and how they will have an “epidemic” of something-or-other unless they force employees to get coached etc.

Hyperdiagnosis is also, however, the wellness industry’s bread-and-butter, so naturally wellness vendors defend this practice.  In this article, Bravo Wellness CEO Jim Pshock was quoted as saying:  “The hope is that the program will get people to proactively see their physicians to manage their health risks. Yes, this will, hopefully, mean more prescription drug utilization and office visits, but fewer heart attacks and cancers and strokes.”

The only innocent explanation for this comment is that Bravo canceled its subscription to the internet to conserve cash.  Seems that all the literature, easily searchable online — plus Choosing Wisely — says that “proactive” annual checkups are a waste of time and money and will not prevent heart attacks and strokes, and certainly not cancers.  (They will, however, make drug use and physician office visit expense increase.  That much he got right.)  A quick Google search would have revealed that to him…if only he had access to Google.

This whole thing would be pretty amusing except that Bravo’s business model includes fining employees for not getting checkups that are more likely to harm them than benefit them, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.  Harming employees is where the joke ends.

Otherwise, the only other explanation for this comment is that he is — heaven forbid — lying.  And we would be pshocked, pshocked to learn that lying is going on in here!

Why would any smart person waste time & money on low-value medical care? Better not ask Bravo.

Therefore, since a wellness vendor would never lie, Mr. Pshock must have allowed his internet subscription to expire.  We’d urge all readers to donate early and often to Bravo Wellness to help them keep the lights on.