We’re excited to share our new research on hospital overuse just published in JAMA Network Open!
For this paper, the Lown Institute team applied overuse criteria for 12 low-value services to 3351 US hospitals, using Medicare claims data from 2015-2017. They found that certain procedures were overused at disturbingly high rates: 64% of hysterectomies, 52% of carotid endarterectomies, and 25% of coronary stents that hospitals performed met the criteria for overuse nationwide. From 2015-2017, 26% of Medicare patients who came to hospitals with syncope received head imaging, and 11% received carotid imaging.
Controlling for other characteristics, hospitals in the South and for-profit hospitals had worse overuse scores than hospitals in other regions and nonprofit hospitals, on average. Major teaching hospitals had better scores than minor or non-teaching hospitals.
Check out the full paper here. For a more robust discussion, and to see the individual winners, join us for the overuse launch on May 4th!