News

The Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation (CHRT), in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation (IHPI),  received a $55,380 grant from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation to develop a tool to help assess a state’s capacity to launch a statewide Choosing Wisely® campaign.

An initiative of the ABIM Foundation in partnership with Consumer Reports, Choosing Wisely encourages clinicians and patients to engage in conversations aimed at reducing unnecessary care. To date, more than 75 medical specialty societies have collectively published more than 485 tests and treatments they say are overused and should be discussed.

“Choosing Wisely has helped stimulate a national—and now international—conversation about reducing waste and overuse thanks to the leadership of our medical specialty society partners, as well as Consumer Reports and its important patient-education efforts,” said Daniel B. Wolfson, MHSA, the ABIM Foundation’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.

“While the Choosing Wisely campaign is widely recognized as a leading movement in this area, we believe more work is needed to ensure conversations between clinicians and patients happen consistently across all care settings. CHRT and IHPI’s work will help us better understand what tools and resources states will need to advance Choosing Wisely in their communities.”

For example, in Michigan, a variety of Choosing Wisely-focused initiatives and projects are currently active and led independently by providers, payers and other organizations across the state. However, the lack of a centralized system or mechanism that allows these independently-managed efforts to share resources, data or learnings hinders opportunities to collaborate and learn from one another.

To develop a way to unite these currently fragmented efforts, the team of CHRT and IHPI researchers, led by CHRT’S Research and Evaluation Director, Melissa Riba, will first develop and validate a set of criteria to assess what makes an effective, high-functioning Choosing Wisely state-level initiative.

Using that framework, the team will then create and test a tool to assess a state’s readiness to engage in an effort that unites existing Choosing Wisely efforts across the state and also provides the foundation for new initiatives to develop. The tool will be tested in Michigan.

“Many healthcare organizations are beginning to focus on Choosing Wisely and related efforts to make sure patients get the care they need, but not care that is unnecessary or maybe harmful.  We want to understand how these organizations can best work together to improve appropriate healthcare delivery throughout Michigan,” says Eve Kerr, M.D., M.P.H., professor of Internal Medicine and IHPI leadership team member at the University of Michigan and director of the VA Center for Clinical Management Research.

Adds Marianne Udow-Phillips, CHRT’s Executive Director: “Our work supporting the ABIM Foundation and the Choosing Wisely campaign is a natural extension of previous CHRT work on identifying low value care in our healthcare system. Helping states create coordinated campaigns around such efforts is an important evolution of the Choosing Wisely mission.”

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About CHRT

Founded in 2007, the Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation (CHRT) is an independent 501(c)(3) impact organization at the University of Michigan. CHRT’s experts work with decision makers to improve population health as well as healthcare access and quality by transforming healthcare research and evidence into actionable policy approaches. CHRT’s affiliation with the University of Michigan affords access to a wide array of subject matter and clinical experts.