Low-value Care

What Is The Status Of Research On Low-Value Care?

Abstract: Millions of Americans are receiving medical treatments, tests, and procedures that are either wasteful or ineffective every single year. These services, dubbed as “low-value health care,” are defined as services for which the potential for harm outweighs the potential for benefit, and they have critical consequences for patients and the health system at large, as they are estimated to cost $300 billion nationally each year.

Publication: Health Affairs

Date Published: January 8, 2020

Author(s): Elizabeth L. Cope and Paul Armstrong

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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.