Choosing Wisely is an international effort to give consumers and clinicians guidance on practices, tests and procedures which have little or no value and just should be done either not at all or only in certain circumstances. In theory the strength of Choosing Wisely is [...]
Patients might not be getting the best advice about which treatments do or don’t work, according to our study published today. We found professional societies are more likely to call out other health professionals for providing low-value treatments rather than look in their own backyard...
Choosing Wisely recommendations are framed in ways that lessen potential impact on the members of the society making the recommendation. Only 20% of treatment recommendations refer to income-generating treatments, and these are less likely to target members compared to non-members. Although nearly half of Choosing [...]
Overuse of care that does not confer benefit to patients and wastes limited resources is being increasingly recognised as a major healthcare problem. The preferred measure of overuse of a specific intervention is applying an evidence‐ or consensus‐based measure of inappropriateness directly to the medical [...]
The problem of the overuse of healthcare services and how to address it has gained increasing policy and research attention over the past decade.Overuse encompasses terms like ‘low‐value care’, ‘unnecessary care’ and ‘too much medicine’ and refers to care that delivers no or very little [...]
Low back pain is the single biggest cause of years lived with disability worldwide, and a major challenge to international health systems. In 2018, the Lancet Low Back Pain Series Working Group identified a global problem of mismanagement of low back pain. The group documented the [...]
We used multilevel modelling to examine variation at hospital of treatment, Local Health District of the hospital, and patient’s area of residence. Most variation was at the hospital level. We conclude that investigations into the causes of low-value care and initiatives to reduce low-value care [...]
With Wiser Healthcare's A/Prof Jesse Jansen
Low-value care is not just a matter of waste, but also involves patient safety. Some patients admitted to hospital for a procedure that is unlikely to benefit them are being harmed. We measured 16 hospital-acquired complication in patients admitted for 1 of 7 low-value procedures [...]
Advice is mounting to warn Australians against arthroscopic knee surgery, especially for patients with osteoarthritis who are aged over 50. President of the Australian Rheumatology Association Professor Rachelle Buchbinder said it could be doing more harm than good...