After getting spinal fusion surgery, Lisa French was charged $300,000 after the hospital had quoted her $1,300 for the surgery. When she was unable to pay, the nonprofit hospital sued. As the spinal fusion industry booms, this case shows another risk of unnecessary surgeries -- getting overcharged and potentially sued by hospitals. More
Texas ranked 47th of 50 states in avoiding unnecessary procedures, according to a report by the Lown Institute, a Massachusetts think tank, which found that hospitals across the country performed about 100,000 unnecessary surgeries in 2020. Unnecessary procedures cost the health care system as much as $101 billion a year in wasted spending, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. More
Should we recommend earlier prostate cancer screening for Black men, who have a higher risk of prostate cancer mortality? We examine the pros and cons of this question raised by a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. More
A telehealth company's downfall sheds light on the overprescription of stimulants to ADHD patients More
Last year, the Lown Institute, a nonprofit healthcare think tank based in Needham, Massachusetts, reported that hospitals performed more than 1 million unnecessary tests and procedures on Medicare patients from 2016 to 2018. Unnecessary tests and procedures can put patients at risk of complications and drive up the cost of care. More
What's the evidence behind PCI, and why do hospitals keep doing these procedures? We revisit this issue with a look back at research and interviews over last few years to give you the answers. More
Despite the risks posed by COVID-19, hospitals continued to perform eight common, low-value procedures during the first year of the pandemic at a rate similar to 2019, according to a Lown Institute analysis published Tuesday. More
For the ranking, Lown examined service use measures at more than 3,100 hospitals. Data in the ranking came from the Medicare claims database and spanned 2018 to 2020. Eight common procedures — including hysterectomy for benign disease, coronary stents for stable heart disease and spinal fusion for low back pain — were measured. Four tests were also considered. Hospitals with the capacity to do four or more of the services were ranked. More
U.S. hospitals performed more than 100,000 surgeries on older patients during the first year of the pandemic, according to a new Lown Institute analysis. The healthcare think tank relied on Medicare claims data and analyzed eight common low-value procedures. It called the 100,000 procedures unnecessary and potentially harmful in a press release. It found that between March and December 2020, among the most-performed surgeries were coronary stents and back surgeries. More
In the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, did hospitals curb unnecessary and potentially harmful services? Watch the video of the roundtable discussion on overuse during Covid-19 to find out! More
Overprescribing of antibiotics for Medicare patients with Covid-19 was rampant in the first year of the pandemic, research from the CDC finds. More
The life expectancy of the average American dropped by 2 years in 2020, but by only a few months in peer countries. This discrepancy gets worse when you adjust for sex, race, and ethnicity. This is despite the fact that the US spends the most money on healthcare in the world. How do we get such poor health outcomes with such high spending? More
As MRI has become a more popular screening tool for women at low or average risk of cancer, researchers caution that one MRI can easily "cascade" into more medical medical services and diagnoses More
Over the past decade, what has the Choosing Wisely program taught us about strategies and obstacles to reducing low-value care? Vikas Saini discusses on the NEJM podcast. More
One of the big selling points of 3D mammograms is their potential to reduce false positive results. However, a new study shows that 3D mammograms don't reduce false positives as much as you would think. More
Can you name a prescription drug that makes you healthy? What would it be? Over 66% of the US population takes prescription medication regularly. The elderly are in worse shape. As a group, 40% of them take five or more prescriptions, and nearly 10% take ten or more prescription drugs daily, according to a 2020 report from the nonpartisan think tank Lown Institute. More
In America's cancer centers, where many patients go for specialized cancer treatment, prostate screening policies do not always align with evidence-based recommendations. More
Mental health apps designed to improve access to care may be driving overdiagnosis and overmedication, a recent investigation finds. More
According to stats from the Lown Institute, 1 in 250 Americans go to a hospital emergency room each year due to an adverse drug event. That’s millions of people going to the hospital due to adverse drug events. What a big problem. More
A newly-developed metric of low-value prescribing practices helps fill an important gap in the research of overuse metrics. More