Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health System plans to soon offer DNA sequencing to 1,000 patients, with the goal of providing the service to all three million of its patients.
Geisinger will cover the estimated $300 to $500 for the sequencing test, according to Kaiser Health News. Researchers believe the test—which looks for mutations in at least 77 genes that are associated with dozens of medical conditions, including heart disease—could become a cornerstone of primary care.
About 3.5 percent of the people who have been tested through the system were found to have genetic variants that may influence their health, offering opportunities for clinicians to recommend preventive steps.
“Most of the medical spending in America is done after people have gotten sick,” David Feinberg, MD, MBA, Geisinger’s president and CEO, told KHN. “We think this will decrease spending on a lot of care.”
But for heart disease specifically, Dartmouth College professor H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH, isn’t sure knowledge of genetic variations would do much to influence treatment.
“What are we really going to do differently for those patients?” he said. “We should all be concerned about heart disease. We should all exercise, we should eat real food.
“Doctors will feel the pressure to do something: start a medication, order a test, make a referral. You have to be careful. Bad things happen.”
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Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.