A Zero Sum Game

Knowing nothing about economics, I can't say whether "zero-sum game" is technically the right phrase here. What I mean is that nearly everything done in medicine comes with a cost. In studying for my exam tomorrow, I'm looking at laboratory medicine where "shotgun screening" is not encouraged. You can't just order all the tests for every patient and see what happens. Each test is a drain on resources: money, time, reagents. Tests should only be ordered if they will change the diagnosis or alter patient care. It's easy enough to do a blood draw and send it in for "the works," but is that really cost-efficient? Is it really the best thing to do for your patient and for health care in general? Furthermore, even if all tests are 95% accurate, if you order 20 tests, one of them will come back a false positive or a false negative. I guess I wanted to point out that you can't order all the labs "just because." You have to use medical acumen to determine which tests are useful. I think many times, we automatically overestimate what we need to cover our bases, and this is not a good use of resources.