Collaborating Across Disciplines
Recognizing the importance of educating its members about Choosing Wisely® recommendations from other societies, the American Society of Hematology (ASH), at its annual meeting this month, announced a Choosing Wisely list that incorporates recommendations from the American College of Radiology, American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Society for Hospital Medicine, American Association of Blood Banks and American Society of Clinical Oncology that are highly relevant and important to the practice of hematology.
“There is so much value in all of the Choosing Wisely recommendations, and we wanted to maximize that,” said Lisa Hicks, MD, an ASH member who led this and previous ASH Choosing Wisely efforts. “Patient care is multifaceted, and creating this list speaks to that. It’s a community and we can learn from each other. We hope this will encourage ASH members to collaborate with other societies to find ways to reduce overuse and improve patient care.”
ASH has been a partner in Choosing Wisely since December 2013 when they released their first list of five tests and procedures hematologists and patients should question. ASH added five more items to its list in December 2014.
In early 2015, the ASH Choosing Wisely Task Force launched a review using a validated reliability tool (MORETM scale), which is similar to those used to review medical literature, in order to assess the hematologic relevance of all existing Choosing Wisely recommendations. By prioritizing recommendations that would avoid patient harm, the task force reached consensus on 10 that were most important to hematologists and their patients and presented the top five highest ranked items at their annual meeting this December.
“It is not as hard as you might think to do a systematic review of the 400 recommendations using the pre-existing reliability tool. Since the tool is not specific to hematology, the methods are adaptable to other professional societies,” said Dr. Hicks.
The final list included areas such as computed tomography testing for pulmonary embolism (PE) (American College of Radiology) and repetitive lab testing (Society for Hospital Medicine). Dr. Hicks said these recommendations are high-impact, since they have ample evidence, avoid patient harm and impact other disciplines, and therefore might present opportunities for establishing successful utilization strategies.
While ASH used an internal process to review and select the relevant recommendations, the society is now inviting others to join the discussion. Dr. Hicks and leading experts from other specialties will speak about the expanded list and participate in a question-and-answer session Monday, December 7 at 12:15 p.m. during the ASH annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. Follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #ASH15.
“The next step will be figuring out how to implement the recommendations,” Dr. Hicks said. “Creating this list opens the door for collaboration across disciplines. We need to nudge the community beyond academic pieces and make people more aware of efforts to avoid overuse of these tests.”
