VIDEO: New research on hospital overuse

By Judith Garber | April 27, 2021

We’re excited to share our new research on hospital overuse just published in JAMA Network Open!

For this paper, the Lown Institute team applied overuse criteria for 12 low-value services to 3351 US hospitals, using Medicare claims data from 2015-2017. They found that certain procedures were overused at disturbingly high rates: 64% of hysterectomies, 52% of carotid endarterectomies, and 25% of coronary stents that hospitals performed met the criteria for overuse nationwide. From 2015-2017, 26% of Medicare patients who came to hospitals with syncope received head imaging, and 11% received carotid imaging.

Controlling for other characteristics, hospitals in the South and for-profit hospitals had worse overuse scores than hospitals in other regions and nonprofit hospitals, on average. Major teaching hospitals had better scores than minor or non-teaching hospitals.

Check out the full paper here. For a more robust discussion, and to see the individual winners, join us for the overuse launch on May 4th!

To eliminate medication overload, serious cultural, educational, and policy changes are needed. This action plan offers recommendations for policymakers, health care institutions, clinicians, and patients across five key categories to reduce harm from multiple medication use. Suggested Citation: Eliminating medication overload: A national action plan. Working Group on Medication Overload. Brookline, MA: The Lown Institute, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.46241/LI.YLBW4885

Pharmaceutical marketing is a significant factor in the growing public health crisis of medication overload, which puts millions of older adults at risk of preventable harm and premature death. This issue brief provides recommendations to reduce pharmaceutical industry influence by limiting pharma sales rep visits to clinicians and direct-to-consumer advertising.

This issue brief provides recommendations for clinical practice guidelines and electronic health records that would give clinicians the information they need to appropriately prescribe and deprescribe.