Sunday, March 03, 2013
Overuse
We’re still somewhat short of being serious about reducing
the cost of health care.
The February 25 issue of Modern Healthcare included an
article about a program called Choosing Wisely “a multi-specialty initiative
created to curb overuse of healthcare.”
Sponsored by the Washington-based ABIM foundation, Choosing Wisely has
been requesting various professional medical societies to provide lists of “five
commonly ordered but usually unnecessary – and sometimes harmful - tests and
procedures, based on available evidence.”
On February 21 the program issued a list of 90 such items
which, when added to a list issued last April, brings the complete list such
“potentially unnecessary tests and procedures” identified to date to a total of
135.
The article pointed out that it is difficult to determine
the extent to which the Choosing Wisely effort is affecting what doctors
actually do in their daily practice.
All this is fine, but progress will be slow as long as we
depend on national organizations coming up with suggestions and then waiting
for them to be adopted by practitioners.
How much more rapid progress would be if, instead, the
hundreds of patient care organizations across the country were all diligently
engaged in finding ways to reduce cost while improving care. We need to be searching for ways to make that
happen.