Low-value Care

3 Decades After Approval, Still on the Balancing Beam

Abstract: The adoption of expensive medical technology by individual providers to compete for patients is one of the reasons that U.S. healthcare is the world’s most expensive on a per capita basis. Many experts see proton beam as a classic example of an American-style medical arms race. “There’s real harm in spending money on something that’s not better and is more expensive. That harm is a hospital not investing in something else that could improve its community or improve the health of more patients,” Shannon Brownlee, special adviser to the president of the Lown Institute, wrote in a recent blog post about proton beam therapy.

Publication: Managed Healthcare Executive

Date Published: April 21, 2021

Author(s): Keith Loria and Peter Wehrwein

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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.