Identifying Potential Areas of Low-Value Healthcare-Phase 0

In Chapter 4, we introduced a framework for reducing low-value care. In this chapter, we discuss the first phase of the framework: how to identify low-value health services. First, we identify several ways to identify low-value care. Next, we describe resources that identify low-value care including lists of low-value care, guidelines, and systematic reviews that can help you to identify potential low-value care to target. Existing resources include Choosing Wisely recommendations, clinical practice guidelines (for example, US Preventive Services Task Force Grade D recommendations), health technology assessment reports, and systematic reviews (for example, Cochrane reviews). We end with the connection between identifying low-value care and measuring it locally, which will be discussed in Chapter 7.