VIDEO: Hospital overuse during Covid-19

By Judith Garber | May 17, 2022

In the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, did hospitals curb unnecessary and potentially harmful services? Or was it business as usual, despite the lack of vaccines and risk of infection?

The Lown Institute is the first to measure rates of hospital overuse during the Covid-19 pandemic. At a roundtable discussion, Lown leaders Vikas Saini, Shannon Brownlee, and Kelsey Chalmers presented the findings.

Watch the video of this event to find out:

how the volume and rates of overuse changed throughout 2020;
which surgeries were most likely to be overused in 2020; and
how overuse differed by state and Covid-19 case incidence.

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.