Overview of the Drivers of Low-Value Care; Comment on “Key Factors that Promote Low-Value Care: Views of Experts From the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands”

Document Type : Commentary

Authors

1 Institute for Musculoskeletal Health, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

2 Sydney Local Health District, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Abstract

Verkerk and colleagues explored the key drivers of low-value care from the perspective of 18 policy-makers and researchers who had led and evaluated at least one initiative to reduce low-value care or had been responsible for reducing low-value care in an organisation. They identified several drivers of low-value care presented in the 2017 Lancet Right Care Series (eg, fee for service payment systems, the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, fear of malpractice litigation, issues with research conduct and reporting, a culture of ‘more is better’ and ‘new technology is better’) but did not discuss some other important ones. In this commentary, we aim to extend the work of Verkerk and colleagues and provide some additional perspectives on the drivers of low-value care within the following categories: Economic incentives; Money, finance, and organisation; Knowledge beliefs, assumptions, bias and uncertainty; and Power and human relationships.

Keywords

  • epublished Author Accepted Version: January 29, 2022
  • epublished Final Version: February 14, 2022

References

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International Journal of Health Policy and Management
Volume 11, Issue 8
August 2022
Pages 1595-1598

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History

  • Receive Date: 05 October 2021
  • Revise Date: 24 January 2022
  • Accept Date: 26 January 2022
  • First Publish Date: 29 January 2022

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