HCFO Researcher Quoted in MedPage Today on Choosing Wisely & Low-Value Care

Reducing low-value care is one strategy to avoid harming patients while constraining U.S. health care costs. In MedPage Today [1], former HCFO grantee, Carrie Colla, Ph.D., Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Geisel Medical School, discussed findings from her HCFO-funded study [2], which examined the prevalence, variation, and correlates of overuse of low-value services, as designated by the Choosing Wisely [3] initiative. Colla noted, "One of the interpretations [of our findings] was that specialty societies weren't choosing things that affected their own revenue streams, they were choosing things that affected others' revenue streams,” which suggests that the addition of higher-impact services to the Choosing Wisely lists might yield greater effects on care and spending.