The efforts were triggered by the actions of a group of orthopedists critical of the Choosing Wisely guidelines for their specialties.
Specialist groups working with the Lown Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit that seeks to transform healthcare systems and improve the health of communities, are offering an alternative to the ABIM Foundation's Choosing Wisely campaign.
Members of the Lown Institute are producing their own lists of "dos and don'ts" based on their analyses of overuse in their fields of care. Their efforts were triggered by the actions of a group of orthopedists who are critical of the Choosing Wisely guidelines for their specialties.
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The specialty councils, which make up make up Lown's "Right Care Alliance," are charged with identifying and raising awareness of problems of "overuse, underuse, and misuse in their specialties," according to the group's website.
The group's Radiology and Cardiology councils are working on papers they plan to publish in medical journals outlining the issues of overuse in their specialties, according to the group's newsletter. Another 10 councils are creating "top ten lists" in their specialties. The group plans to release the lists in early 2017.
Over the past four years, about 70 specialty groups with the Choosing Wisely campaign "have released recommendations with the intention of facilitating wise decisions about the most appropriate care based on a patients' individual situation."
The Right Care Alliance move comes after the Society for Patient Centered Orthopedics created a list of overused procedures in response to the Choosing Wisely orthopedic surgery list "which has been the target of widespread criticism for not going after some of the most obvious cases of overuse in orthopedics, such as spinal fusion," according to the newsletter.
Related: Disappointing Results Seen Thus Far for Choosing Wisely
The founding members of the Lown musculoskeletal council also belong to Society for Patient Centered Orthopedics.
"The Top Ten Lists can serve as building blocks for thinking about significant, actionable policy initiatives, such as creating the infrastructure needed for more widely available primary care" according to the Right Care Alliance's newsletter.
"Ideally, the Top Ten Lists will generate debate in the health care community and public forums."
Most of the 60 physician societies and medical specialty groups participating in the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation's Choosing Wisely campaign to curb unnecessary tests or treatments do not list high-revenue services, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.