The Australian – The doctors betraying their oath to do no harm
Medical procedures that don’t help the patient, overdiagnosis, the ‘medicalisation of normal’… two doctors argue that it has to stop.
Low value care is a health hazard that calls for patient empowerment – Ian Scott, Adam Elshaug & Melissa Fox
Low value care is care that is ineffective, harmful of confers marginal benefit at disproportionately high cost. Professionally-led campaigns such as Choosing Wisely Australia and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians' EVOLVE program aim to reduce the prevalence of such care. Read More
Promise and perils of patient decision aids for reducing low-value care – Rachel Thompson et al.
Recognition of excessive waste and harm in health systems has prompted efforts to reduce low-value care, which has been defined as ‘use of an intervention where evidence suggests it confers no or very little benefit on patients, or risk of harm exceeds likely benefit, or, [...]
Estimating misclassification error in a binary performance indicator: case study of low value care in Australian hospitals
Indicators based on hospital administrative data have potential for misclassification error, especially if they rely on clinical detail that may not be well recorded in the data. We applied an approach using modified logistic regression models to assess the misclassification (false-positive and false-negative) rates of [...]
BMC Health Services Research – Hospital characteristics associated with low-value care in public hospitals in New South Wales, Australia – Tim Badgery-Parker, Sallie-Anne Pearson, Adam Elshaug
Rates of low-value care vary between hospitals in New South Wales, Australia. Understanding factors associated with this variation will help in understanding the drivers of low-value care and in planning initiatives to reduce low-value care.
Lown Institute – Hospitals Index (with Wiser Healthcare’s Kelsey Chalmers & Adam Elshaug)
Good hospitals are vital to healthy communities, but how you measure 'good' matters. This US index offers a new model for weighing up a hospital's worth beyond traditional metrics. The rankings are based on a hospital’s contribution to the public good in three broad categories: [...]
Prevention of non-communicable disease: best buys, wasted buys, and contestable buys – Wanrudee Isaranuwatchai et al.
This article highlights the importance of local context in making decisions about implementing interventions for preventing non-communicable diseases
Estimating misclassification error in a binary performance indicator: case study of low value care in Australian hospitals – Tim Badgery-Parker, Sallie-Anne Pearson & Adam Elshaug
Considerable effort is made worldwide to measure performance of health systems, to ensure care is safe, high quality, effective and cost-effective. Many performance indicators involve rates of occurrence of an event, such as mortality, readmission, or complication rates. Commonly, these rates are estimated using administrative [...]
The Conversation – Hospitals have stopped unnecessary elective surgeries – and shouldn’t restart them after the pandemic
Part of Australia’s response to the coronavirus pandemic was a severe reduction in elective surgery, and so private hospitals have stood almost empty for a month now. People who might otherwise have had a procedure are experiencing “watchful waiting”, where their condition is monitored to assess [...]
Open Access Book: ‘Wasted Buys’ chapter of Best, Wasted & Contestable Buys in NCD Prevention – Adam Elshaug et al.
Created by an international consortium of experts, this informative and accessible book provides practical guidelines, key learning points, and dynamic, real-world case studies to aid NCD program managers, policy officers and decision-makers in low- and middle-income countries, so that they can assess interventions for the [...]