To Reduce Unnecessary Care, Choosing Wisely Moves from Awareness to Implementation

In 2012 the ABIM Foundation launched the Choosing Wisely campaign with the goal of kick-starting an important and needed national conversation about unnecessary health care tests and procedures. A pervasive and persistent problem in our health care system, unnecessary care was estimated by the Institute of Medicine to amount to $750 billion a year—roughly 30 percent of health care spending—and was projected to keep growing. Since then, Choosing Wisely has grown precipitously, adding more than 100 new partners and evolving its approach to make a lasting impact. Most recently, through the support of grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the campaign has turned from creating awareness of overuse to supporting and measuring the implementation of solutions to the overuse problem. Planting the Seeds of Change Building off of its mission to advance medical professionalism, with the Choosing Wisely campaign, the ABIM Foundation took an elegant and surprisingly unprecedented approach, inviting physicians themselves to take the lead in recommending solutions. This was done through national medical specialty societies that developed lists of “Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question,” which offer specific, evidence-based recommendations that physicians and patients should discuss to help patients make wise decisions about the right care for their individual situations. The idea was that by having the recommendations come from physicians themselves, t...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Technology GrantWatch Health Professionals Quality Choosing Wisely Consumers Effectiveness Health Philanthropy Physicians Source Type: blogs