An End-Of-Summer Reading List

It’s been a busy summer for the Choosing Wisely® campaign, and we’ve compiled some of the top headlines to keep you in the loop. For regular updates, follow #ChoosingWisely on Twitter. To share your own Choosing Wisely stories, send us an email.

• In “To Reduce Unnecessary Care, Choosing Wisely Moves from Awareness to Implementation” on Health Affairs Blog, ABIM Foundation Executive Vice President and COO Daniel Wolfson and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Officer Susan Mende write about Choosing Wisely’s shift from building awareness to implementation and the hopes for a new group of grantees. “Their work holds great promise, and we look forward to seeing what comes of it.”

• Health Leaders Media’s “Latest Choosing Wisely Grantees to Focus on Patients” documents how two of the new Choosing Wisely grantees—Maine Quality Counts and the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality—plan to reduce unnecessary tests and treatments, including a specific focus on antibiotics. Read more about the work of all new grantees.

• “5 Things Your Baby Should Avoid In The NICU” appeared on NPR’s “Health Shots” and featured the American Academy of Pediatrics – Section on Perinatal Pediatrics’ new Choosing Wisely list of five things clinicians and parents of infants should question. “I think the take-home message isn’t that these are five tests and treatments that appear to have low value, but these represent five of probably many that when used routinely don’t add value to the care of the baby,” said DeWayne Pursley, MD, chief neonatologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and senior author on a paper published in Pediatrics in conjunction with the list release.

• In an opinion piece in the Boston Globe entitled “Diagnostic Testing Carries Its Own Health Risks,” John W. Davis, MD, associate professor of urology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, wrote, “With the wealth of treatment options available patients start to feel like guinea pigs, wondering why they’re being subjected to test after test and becoming more anxious with each procedure.” The piece also mentions a study from Academic Emergency Medicine that found that 97 percent of emergency room doctors admitted to ordering imaging scans that weren’t medically necessary.

• “Building Protocols into EHRs Can Help Cut Wasteful Care” in Modern Healthcare documents how the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center built alerts into its EHR based on Choosing Wisely recommendations about when spine imaging might not be necessary. The article addresses some challenges health systems face as more are trying to track overuse and shift behaviors.

• The Hospitalist’s “Hospitalist-Led Quality Improvement Projects to Replicate in Your Hospital” highlights Choosing Wisely interventions at five hospitals around the country, focusing on projects that can be reproduced by others.  An accompanying short piece, “How to Initiate a Choosing Wisely Project in Your Hospital,” presents some tips and best practices.
• “Cardiac Critical Care: Limiting Unnecessary Treatment,” (login required) a six-minute Mayo Clinic commentary from TheHeart.org for Medscape, features Sunil V. Mankad, MD, interviewing Gregory W. Barsness, MD, director of the Mayo Clinic cardiac intensive care unit, about how awareness around Choosing Wisely is growing.