It seems doctors that purchase expensive equipment are more likely to use it, even if it doesn't actually seem necessary. This hurts patients, obviously and is just one more example of how modern medicine is profit-driven. According to Bloomberg:
A study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that profits urologists make from referring patients to their own radiation facilities play an outsized role in the treatment decisions. One third of men whose doctors own radiation equipment get the therapy at a cost of about $35,000 per treatment course. The same doctors prescribed the therapy for just 13 percent of their patients before they had their own equipment and could profit directly.
