Weighty talks about wise choices: A new campaign urges pathologists to be the voice of caution on test orders.

摘要

In April 2012, a collaborative effort led by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation and Consumer Reports keyed in on what analysts are increasingly viewing as a major weakness of the US health care system: unnecessary or inappropriate tests and procedures.The Choosing Wisely campaign, as it was dubbed, led multiple medical specialty groups to develop recommendations, titled "Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question." This Februaiy, the American Society for Clinical Patliology (ASCP) released its own list of initial recommendations. John Tomaszewski, MD, past president of ASCP, says the idea is to cull tests that add no clinical value or lead doctors down the wrong path. "I think we just wanted to start that mantra of'right patient, right time, right test,'" says Dr. Tomaszewski, chair of the department of pathology and anatomical sciences at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo in New York.