Low-value Care

Low-value services: Complications, variability, and measurement

There is much we still do not know about low-value care, particularly about the harms of low-value care, differences in utilization, and the intricacies of measuring low-value services. This area is in need of more research, so we are excited to partner with health policy experts Adam Elshaug and Kelsey Chalmers on a suite of low-value care projects, funded by Arnold Ventures.

The project consists of three different studies, in which they will be exploring the following questions:

  1. How often do patients experience hospital-acquired complications as a result of low-value care?
  2. How does utilization of cancer surgeries vary by patients’ income across three countries?
  3. What high-impact low-value services should we be measuring, and what data do we need to be able to measure them?

We will be providing updates on the findings of the research as they come out, so stay tuned!

  • Adam Elshaug is professor of health policy at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. He is also a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.
  • Kelsey is a data scientist at the Lown Institute and a health policy researcher at the University of Sydney, Australia.

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